


Bearserkr

by binz, shiplizard



Category: Dresden Files - All Media Types, Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Bears, Body Hair, Body Modification, Body Worship, Case Fic, Community: kink_bingo, Drugs, F/M, Facial Hair, Headspace, M/M, Multi, Non-Erotic Non-Con, Service, Threesome - F/M/M, Winter Bike, identity play, undercover in a gay bar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-14
Updated: 2012-08-14
Packaged: 2017-11-10 21:43:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 34,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/471019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/binz/pseuds/binz, https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiplizard/pseuds/shiplizard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hendricks goes undercover at a gay bar to catch a new drug runner. It’s a revelation for him-- and for Harry Dresden. But everything’s not smut and roses where supernatural drugs are concerned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bearserkr

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Grenegome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grenegome/gifts).



> Written for kink_bingo, 2012, for the "subspace/headspace" square, with a focus on the latter.
> 
> Giant thanks to Adri for helping make sure things were on the right track! And to Grenegome for her endless patience and enthusiasm. 
> 
> Also, do you guys know _how many_ bear puns there are in the world? And how many of them almost ended up the title of this fic? Count yourselves lucky, is all I'm saying.
> 
> Please note the TW for noncon-- it's a plot point, and a fair amount of story time is spent on it.

“You’re clear on the west side, over,” Bergstein said, followed by a little burst of static. I sat up straight in my seat, Abassi doing the same up in the front of the van, and tugged at my left ear, switching on the microphone function of the little two-way radio tucked in next to my skull. 

“Copy that. Hiram?”

“Clear on the east. Over.” 

East and west down. The south was covered by Abbasi and I, in the van parked a few buildings down the alley from our target, and the north was being watched by Moss, backed up by Gard, although her attention was a little farther spread than just the front of the street and the rooftops. 

“Copy. All clear back here on the south. Moss? Gard?” I glanced out the reinforced van windows and between the buildings to the little 24 hour dinner across the street, where Gard and Moss were seated at a table by the window, ostensibly absorbed in their quiet conversation. 

They looked good. Relaxed, casual. Part of the surroundings. From here, it seemed like Moss might have gotten his color back, and if his hands were still shaking, it wasn’t obvious. I kind of hoped they were; I’d owe Gard coffee for a week if Moss managed to make it through the night without spilling something. I was banking that even with her fixing the odds by toning down her general aura of command and hyper-competence-- she’d been damn near friendly on the ride over-- Moss would still startle the first time she stood up too fast or looked him in the eyes.

“North is clear,” Moss said, brushing a hand behind his ear in a well practiced, natural looking movement. “Over.”

“Perimeter established,” Gard said, “alerts in place. We’ll have a thirty foot warning minimum if anything comes through from the other side, even if we can’t see it. You’re clear, over.”

“Going in, then,” I said. “Keep radio chatter down to a minimum. Hendricks out.” I tugged at my ear again, switching the microphone back off, nodded to Abbasi, and slid open the panel side door.

The fall night rushed in, just cool enough to make me realize how hot I’d gotten, all early October second-summer humidity and a promise of chill on the breeze leftover from the little rain shower an hour ago-- short, but hard enough that Gard had needed to wait to set up the wards and sensors around the block. A couple puddles glistened with oil and all the other things that seep into the ground in a back alley, and I dodged them when I walked a few quick circles, getting my muscles to wake back up and my brain to engage. 

I’d been curled up in the back of that van for a while, and it had definitely not been made for a guy of my size. Or my wardrobe. I gave a little wriggle, trying to get some airflow down my back, or at least unstick my pants from my thighs. Jeans this tight simply do not breathe. Also, they chafe. I tugged at my vest a little, trying to cool off. Wearing a leather vest with nothing underneath it but skin is like voluntarily crawling into a sauna at the height of summer.

My phone buzzed, a text, and I pulled it out of my vest pocket. Gard.

_-Greatest show on earth, raudr :)-_

I pulled a face, aiming it vaguely upwards because as much as Gard explained that when she was monitoring everything, she was monitoring everything, my brain needs an imaginary focal point or I get hives. Then I pushed her surveillance out of my mind; it had been a while since I’d done any kind of undercover work, and I needed to get my head in the game. Plus, I wasn’t going to have her eyes on me once I was inside; I couldn’t let my backbrain rest on the idea that she was watching if something went down. 

My chin itched-- hell, half my face itched-- and I scratched at the full beard there, scowling. Not to mention, the faster I did this, the faster I could get out of this get up. At least for tonight. I drew a deep breath and walked around to the front of the little club. Not that you’d know it was one from the outside; Paton’s a nice little town and all, but in farm country and with thirty thousand people tops... not that I was presuming anything about the locals, and I try to avoid stereotypes, but nightclubs don’t tend to have discreet, generic signs and discreet, generic names. 

Dick’s had a solid front door, but it opened easily into a little foyer, and the guy manning the entrance and the coat check looked big but non threatening enough to double as a bouncer and a polite deterrent. He gave me a quick once over-- I did my best to look a little unsure, a little defensive, a little excited. Nothing to see here but nervous new meat. The face he gave me was gentle, encouraging, so I guess I got my point across. 

“First time in leather?” he asked.

“Uh,” I said.

“I remember my first time.” He gave me a wink firmly on the saucy side of cheeky. “Cover’s five dollars. But tell me your name, handsome, and I’ll give you the first time visitor’s discount.”

I smiled, making my face remember what it was like to be self-conscious and too big and vaguely embarrassed all the time. Not that hard. “Jim.”

“Jim.” His smile was confident, flirtatious without commitment. “Welcome to Dick’s, Jim. I’m Greg. You picked a great night to visit: there’s no cover!”

I chuckled, a little awkwardly, a little excited. Jim was an old farm boy, had worked for his sister and brother-in-law since his parents had passed away. He’d only just worked up the courage to pull on his sexiest clothes and drive for an hour to go to a gay bar for the very first time, forty years into his life. This was a big night for him. “Hope I’m not the only new meat.”

The smile I got was reassuring this time. “Nah, it’s okay. We tend to be a bunch of familiar faces around here, but there’s almost always someone in for the week or the weekend; there’s been another new guy this week. You’ll fit in just fine. Go get them, handsome.”

So I pushed through the inside door separating the entrance from the club itself, and went for it.

The first thing I noticed was the heat. And the next thing I noticed was how it smelt: like heat. Like hot men, their sweat, hot leather, and alcohol gone warm in the glass. And it was loud, sound saturated with a dance track, all the voices shouting over the back beat. The dance floor, tucked to one side and down a little set of stairs, was doing well; there were flailing, swaying, gyrating bodies of all types, shapes, and sizes out there, in various stages of dress, and there was a definite, noticeable skew towards men. There were women here too-- a few groups, some obviously here for the other women, some obviously here for a good time, many probably for both-- but the overall presence of “male” was hard to miss.

I brushed my ear. “I’m in. Any problems?”

A series of negatives, and I told them to keep me informed, switching the mic off again. This might have been my first active night on the operation, but it wasn’t going to be my last; a smooth start was just what the doctor ordered. Jim had a big week ahead of him, maybe more. So I better get to know the place. 

Best I could tell at first glance, Dick’s was a hybrid between a nightclub, a sports bar, and someone’s basement dungeon. There weren’t a lot of places out here in rural west-central Illinois for people who didn’t fit the right label; Dick’s had a lot of different people and a lot of different tastes to cater to, and it was trying its best. 

Our intel had been good; I was definitely dressed for the occasion. I tried not to scratch at my beard or my hair as I stepped out into the main room-- both the stuff on my head, a good couple of inches longer than it normally was, and the patch exposed on my chest, a thatch that kept surprising me when I looked down. Not that I’m normally smooth or anything, there, but there wasn’t usually _that_ much.

I’m loathe to ask Dresden for anything, but I’ll be damned if he hadn’t done a good job with that potion. I shot myself a look in one of the many mirrors dotting the walls, throwing back the minimal club lighting and making it seem like more. If I didn’t know me, I wouldn’t have known me: my longer hair, a little wavy with the extra inches, changed the shape of my face, took the focus off my neck, my beard disguised the shape of my jaw, and between that and the get up-- tight jeans, leather vest, cowboy boots, magically-assisted chest pelt-- the likelyhood of me running into anyone who would recognize Farmer Jim as Mister Hendricks of Chicago had been brought down to almost nil... hopefully.

As my eyes drifted across the crowd, I saw that a lot of them were looking back at me-- with everything ranging from interest, shy regard, and jaded analysis. I didn’t trip over my feet or anything, but the heat that rushed to my face wasn’t all Jim’s. I’m used to people staring at me; it’s all part of the job. I’m not used to people staring at me like _that_. There’d been a definite uptick in the heat of the room, in the eyes watching me, and I made sure to just glance around, taking it all in, and not impassively stare any of my admirers down out of habit. 

I hadn’t even know this bar had existed six weeks ago, but two of the two brand new street drug transporters we’d found had been patrons, whose last clear memories ended here. Cross-referencing missing person’s reports and some local hearsay had turned up at least another five cases of patrons going missing soon after frequenting Dick’s, and there was a definite trend toward the big, strong, and butch in their profiles. Three of the four men were members of the local Bear chapter, and the two women had been firmly on the butch side of self-identification, going by rumors, conversation, and a little bit of internet excavation.

This bar couldn’t be the only base of operations, of course. But it was the biggest lead we had, so here I was, acting as an enforcer for Gentleman Johnny Marcone, a representative of Baron John Marcone, and a piece of meaty bait. If I could get the supplier to bite, then the other operatives would step in before they disappeared me and have a chat with them. Marcone doesn’t like independent drug runners in his city. And he doesn’t like a civilian body count. 

The new stuff was magical, of course-- I’d been expecting the post ThreeEye shoe to drop faster than this. Nod seemed to have similar effects, but less violent, at least looking in from the outside. According to the intelligence, it was a mild mood stabilizer and aphrodisiac, when the user was awake. The real kick of the hit came in dreams: one of the reasons it had taken so damn long to notice it moving on the ground. The users spent half their time sleeping. 

Gard called it a mental defense inhibitor; said it opened passage into the Nevernever through dreams. It took the users to god knows where and god knows what, but they kept going back for more, never realizing that the holes in their mental walls that were letting them out to roam were letting plenty of nasties in. You’d think by now people would know what happens when you lower your firewall so you can access the free XXX HOT AZN GIRLZ downloads. The first cases of cardiac arrest, coma, and stroke after Nod use were already being documented; not to mention what it was doing to the mental health and processes of the users. 

Any of these sets of eyes could belong to my target. 

...Not those ones, though. The guy in the back corner by the bar. Tall and skinny. Dark eyes, dark hair. If I’d been closer, I’d have been able to see the scar running through his right eyebrow, missing his eye and picking up again over his cheekbone, and the other one, cutting through his bottom lip.

The fucking wizard. 

I kept my cool because I’m a professional, and not because Dresden was making it easy. Call it a kind of conditioning: I instinctively associate him with getting shot at, shot period, crisis situations, and the people I love getting brutally wounded, all while Dresden hangs around blowing things up and takes pot shots at my intelligence.

I got myself a table, near the bar, my back as close to the wall as the options allowed, and ducked my head and shuffled a little at the people noticing me walking past because I wasn’t breaking character now that I was in.

I pulled out my phone. _-Dresden’s here.-_

 _-???-_ Gard’s always appreciated the simplicity of text messaging.

_-In the club. “Blending in.”-_

_-Abort mission?-_ It was a reasonable question; I grit my teeth, considering.

_-No. Not yet.-_  
 _-Shit; lost him. Turning off phone and radio. Inform team.-_

I powered down my phone, tucking it away in my pocket again, and reached up to disable my radio entirely-- and then after a second to think about it, pulled it out from behind my ear and shoved it in my pocket after my phone. Dresden was hard on electronics. I shudder to think of the damage he does every day, probably completely unawares, the dumb bastard.

Motion to my three; I turned casually, saw Dresden walking up with two beers. He planted himself on the chair across from me, looking deep into my eyebrows.

“I noticed something,” he whispered, his body language doing a decent approximation of ‘nervous flirtation’. I was pretty sure only the second half was an act.

“Yeah?” I said, not making a show of accepting the drink, or his company. As much as I was less than thrilled to have him around, Jim would be very happy that someone had noticed him and made such a forward overture.

“Mirrors.”

“Couple of them,” I noted, trying to keep the crispness out of my voice. “It’s a nightclub.”

“Some of them are new. Really new. And they focus on the entrances.” 

I flicked my gaze around and had to admit that he was right. Still, it _was_ a nightclub, one that seemed to be building itself year by year-- there were other recent looking decorations too, some lighting was obviously newer than the rest. And, as the little corner with the hooks bolted to the wall and the chains and ropes reminded me, there were lots of uses for mirrors.

“Mirrors are used for lots of things,” Dresden said, sliding his chair around to sit a little closer to me. He leaned in, resting a hand on my arm-- Christ, he had big hands and that was coming from me, and his body temperature was on the high side. “Someone could be watching us through them right now. Don’t show your lips.”

I frowned, but kept facing away from the mirrors anyway. Dresden’s a screw up, but he knows his business. “The hell are you even doing here, Dresden?”

He looked affronted, a full cover-blowing indignation. “Recon!”

“You’re the one who thinks we’re being watched,” I reminded him, shifting back with a sheepish look on my face, his hand coming off my arm. “So I’m going to pretend I made a suggestion you didn’t like.” I held up my hands. Jim hadn’t meant to get fresh with the skinny guy and he was awfully sorry he wasn’t any good at flirting. I just wanted to get out of here without blowing the whole operation.

“Dammit,” Dresden said, leaning back, doing a good job at ‘conciliatory’. I gave him grudging points for catching on fast. “This is my job too, Hendricks.”

“Jim. As regional commander? Or Winter Knight? You can go ahead and storm off now if you want," I added helpfully. 

His face pinched up, considering, and I looked sheepish, like Jim wasn’t fully comfortable with such blatant sizing up, but was still happy to take it. I shifted a little, kept my face to him, but opened up more room between me and the table, spread my legs to show off, just slightly enough not to be blatant, just shyly enough for Jim’s brand of flirtation. Just enough to set off his moral prudishness, if I judged right.

“I’m still the regional commander, and this is still my territory,” Dresden said tightly, not looking below my neck. “You’re the one who brought me in.”

I raised my eyebrows, gave him a once over myself. He looked okay, actually-- by his standards, practically dressed up. A plain t-shirt, dark jeans, cowboy boots. A little underfed and twitchy, but what else was new. “I did not bring you _in_ , Dresden. I bought your services for a single transaction.” I leaned in.

“You brought the situation to my attention.” Something competitive flared in his face and he swooped in to follow me-- stopped himself at about halfway, and slid a knee between my legs, getting up close and personal in my personal space.

I ducked my chin-- Jim was flattered and a little overwhelmed-- then rested my elbows on the table, leaning in a bit more, letting my fingers set on his arm. “How did you know about this place? Guy at the door said there was someone new this week; that you? How often have you been coming here? Didn’t they bounce you the first time you pulled your ‘hysterical queen’ act?” Like anyone had bought that scam about him and Raith, please. Dresden's version of homosexual masculinity was grounded in cheap stereotype.

He smiled, still nervous, still plenty flirty, and closed his hand over mine on his forearm. At least he was keeping it in character. “I’ve been asking around, doing groundwork, collecting names-- some guys to check out and see if they’re still here or off enjoying their second career as Nod mules. I know way more about this place than you do. That guy over there,” he tipped his head to my two o’clock, at a guy chatting with a server. “That’s Kyle. Nice guy. Accountant for the town, likes big guys too, knows who hasn’t been around lately. You go ahead and name me one guy in this place.”

“You don’t think we’ve got it covered?”

He leaned closer, enough that his breath touched my cheek. There was steel in his voice. “Nod is dangerous. I’ve been attacked in dreams before, I know what this means for the victims more than you people can. I’m not going to leave this up to the scumbag.” His hand slid onto my thigh and then squeezed warningly.

“The scumbag has a vested interest in suppressing new drug trades. You could trust him to at least do good business," I hissed into his ear.

“Business,” he mocked.

“Contracts. Promises. You know about those," I shot at him.

His face went tight and I swore at myself for getting involved in his and John’s playground spat, because I might just have blown both our covers by not being the bigger man and letting him Self Righteous away. I acted fast, going in for an awkward kiss to remind him where we were and why he needed to not yell the first stupid thing out of his mouth, and to give him a public excuse to be angry at me.

The angle was off, and my new beard got him first, brushing his cheek before my mouth found his. He let out a breath at the scrape, a surprised little sound I swallowed half of before I registered it, and he sagged against me like someone had cut his strings, sliding half off his seat and half onto me.

I took his weight; not much, steadied him with an arm, discretely pushed him back once the liplock had gone on for long enough.

He stared at my mouth, big brown eyes dark and bewildered, and I had to do a very fast mental revision of how much of this little flirtation was an act. How much he was even aware of, hell. I knew he wasn’t that good an actor. Did he have any idea how he was looking at me? Had I been wrong?

...Shit, was he drugged, there were other things besides Nod out there.

I decided Jim should smile shyly at him and lean in for cheek kiss: it let me ask him, "Has anyone given you an already-opened drink? Given you anything you thought was an aspirin?"

"What the hell, Hendricks, it isn't that kind of place," he gritted out, closing his eyes and leaning his forehead against mine. From the outside we probably looked very affectionate.

I wasn't sure I bought it but he was getting angry and when he gets angry things start exploding. I thought I could hear lights starting to flicker. “How are we playing this, Dresden?”

“Uh,” he said, and his gaze shot away to someplace on the floor, moistening his lips.

Oh Christ.

“I have a secure hotel room. We’re going there now,” I said, my tone as firm as my body language was anticipatory. “Neither of us wants this going wrong because we’re having a pissing match over the same tree.”

“Hendricks,” he said; there was a frustration in his voice I didn't understand.

“Jim,” I corrected him quickly. “It’s Jim.”

“Right. Let’s go”

“Let’s go, beanpole,” I said, giving him a wink and pulled him to his feet. Christ, he was tall. “My place.” I tugged him against my hip and he flashed the room a dopey, nervous grin; nobody noticed. There was a lot of polite not-noticing. His new friend Kyle gave him an encouraging nod.

His hand forced its way into the waistband of my jeans, wedged tight against my hip-- his skin was hot and he was fidgety against me, like a horse getting ready to bolt. Latent and much-loathed homoerotic feelings, or just worrying about how gay he looked? I was glad that the hotel was within walking distance; he’d be hell on a car right now.

We stopped at the coat check to get his duster-- a new duster, just as long and cowboy-ridiculous as his old one, but I guess it almost blended in out here in farmland. Almost. He just about forgot it, actually, jerking back when we got to the door, and Greg bobbed his eyebrows knowingly at us as he handed it over, eyes going right to Harry’s hand tucked in my jeans. Harry clutched the coat to his chest, not stepping away from me long enough to pull it on.

Gard was talking animatedly on her cell-phone outside the diner, the very picture of a type-A businesswoman who wouldn’t rest while there were microbes to be managed. I wished I wasn’t standing next to a walking EMP; she’d done solo work with Dresden before, might have some clues as to what I was getting into.

She bobbed her eyebrows and didn’t quite catch my eye. “That’s GREAT,” she said, voice carrying across the narrow street. “I want the report in the morning.”

She might as well have given me an enthusiastic thumbs up and reminded me to buy condoms. No help there; she probably thought it was hilarious. I was glad I’d turned my radio off. If it’d even survived liplock with a wizard, I’d be listening to four horrible ‘debriefing’ puns right now.

I muscled Dresden a little closer against me, shielding him with my body, hurrying him along. I wanted to get us into the room Gard had warded before we blew any cover we had left. And before his nerve failed him and he had his inevitable defensive heterosexual meltdown. Because either he _was_ a better actor than I’d given him credit for, the way he’d responded to that kiss, the way he was clinging and melting against me now, or...

He couldn’t really be that much of a cliche. I couldn’t believe it.

“Uh,” he said. A street light went out as we walked beneath it.

“Hold on,” I said, pitched it low in my chest, trying to keep attention off us. “Almost there.”

He sighed, shivered a little like he was cold, although I knew how unlikely that was, and tucked in even closer to me, ducking his head and resting it against my shoulder.

Jesus H fucking Christ. I’d faced off against werewolves and demons, but I’d thought that at least self-loathing homophobes only showed up in fairy tales. Or bad sociology studies from the 90s. Same difference, really. All of his bluster and weird phallocentric pride and nasty cracks.

“The beard looks good,” he offered, voice a little strained.

“Thanks,” I said, turning us down the street the hotel was on. Just another thirty feet, thank god. “Recent. Glad you like it, since it’s your handiwork.”

I steered us towards the hotel, a nice little bed and breakfast tucked in on a residential side street, run by an equally nice old lady, Mrs. Crowder, who was hopefully in bed by now. I got the key out of my pocket and into the lock-- in one quick movement, because even with a wizard mid-sexuality crisis and clinging to my arm, locks are a basic part of security-- and then urged us into the thankfully dark foyer.

Dresden gave a little shudder as we passed over the threshold. Shit-- I wasn't happy to have him, but that didn't mean I wanted to rub him over a psychic cheese grater. “You okay? I didn’t think about that--” Gard hadn’t had any trouble, but the owner had invited us in...

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s a public building, now. Not much left.” He was still holding onto me, that one hand tucked in my jeans. He swallowed, pressed closer, like he could disappear himself into me.

“This way,” I said, and guided us to the stairs.

It was only one flight up, which was good, because the steps were old and narrow, and Dresden was insisting on touching me. His hand in my waistband slid around from my side to my back, but he kept a firm hold, standing close while I got the bedroom door open. It’d have been flattering if it wasn’t so ridiculous.

“Wait, wait,” I said, and held him back just in case he decided he was in a rush and tried to blow past me. “I grant Harry Dresden, Wizard of the White Council and Knight of Winter, passage in good faith; be you he, you may enter.”

Inside the room, a flickering blue light lit up for a second, brightened when Dresden and I passed under it, and then faded back to nothing.

“Nice ward,” Dresden said, peering up at where it lay dormant, at the top of the doorframe. “Would it know if I wasn’t me?”

“Said it was secure,” I grunted, and flipped on the room light.

He pressed close to me again, breathing a little fast, in a skittish, anxiety-attack way, not a sexy way, and went for a kiss. Always leading with his mouth, wasn’t he? I turned my head, caught his cheek and shoulder with my beard, and he sort of brayed, startled and shuddering.

I took a step back, leaving him where he was. “Stop it. Stop it, Dresden, listen to me.”

He tried to follow after me, frowning.

“No. Look. Stay here,” I said, and went to the bathroom, filling a cup with water and downing it in one go. I looked at myself in the mirror-- still didn’t recognize myself. But I forced some calm into my eyes, tried to chase out the irritated, force myself to really focus. I was going to need to have the brain for both of us here, and figure out what the hell was actually going on.

Then I went back-- he was still standing where I’d left him, looking lost-- and took him by the shoulders. “Dresden. Are we here talking about the case, or are we here because I picked you up in a bar?”

“We both know that was part of your cover.” His nostrils flared. "Not that you weren't having fun trying to freak me out. I should have told you; I've kind of been around the Winter block a few times. An attractive guy flirting with me isn't going to send me running."

I lifted my chin coldly. "Sorry; I was out of the loop. I was remembering the way you treat everyone who isn't a white straight western male. Or doesn't use lots of syllables in front of you."

He looked like I'd slapped him. "Okay. Fine. Got it. I'm an asshole and you and your criminal friends are better than me. So let's talk business. "

"Let's talk about what the hell just happened in the bar."

“You looked good, okay? I didn’t think you’d look--” his eyes stumbled down my body, tripping over the vest and the thatch of chest hair and the tight jeans, then whipped back up to burn figurative holes through my cheekbone. “I don't lie to myself as much as I used to and I _do_ like the company at Dick's, but I don't want to inflict the fucking _Winter Knight_ on some poor bastard-- I'm so neck deep in secrets I'm afraid I'll get them killed or targeted or-- and you're _safe_ , and I thought-- it was a stupid mistake. Next time don’t kiss me.”

The main lamp died, leaving us with just strips of the bathroom light to cast shadows on us. Probably easier for him. Easier for me. As great as it would be to pretend that I was just along for his wild ride through his denial, there was a decent chunk of my hindbrain that was intrigued, excited. By the identity play, by slipping into this archetype, by going through the motions of male-male flirtation and playing Dresden’s little ‘will we won’t we’ game right along with him. Pushing at the boundaries of past experiences. Christ, was John rubbing off on me?

The transgression of stepping outside my usual sexual self, my usual identity, the adrenaline of fighting with Dresden, familiar and tempting in its pettiness.

“Next time I won't kiss you. I thought you were straight,” I said.

“Ditto. At least I have an excuse: the fae aren’t really vanilla about anything. What’s yours?”

My lips thinned out. There wasn't an answer here that made me sound like anything less than an asshole, because that's what I'd been. Sometimes you have to admit you’re wrong, instead of trying to fight through it. “...I was curious. I’m sorry.”

He exhaled hard. “Okay.” A beat. “Any chance you want to screw and figure out the politics later?”

According to Gard, when they’d run a mission on her day off once, he’d ‘clung to his virtue too tightly for a post-fight lay.’ The faeries really had changed him. Self-actualized and sex-positive Harry was throwing me off my game. I looked back to the door, but the ward rune was inactive. No outside influences, one way or another. He wasn't on anything magical and I know the signs of the various nonmagical influences. I had to admit that I'd completely screwed this one up. He wasn't drugged. He was coming out to me. 

He wanted me. He had wanted me in the bar, wanted to touch me. The kind of thing that would have thrilled Jim, flattered and frightened him in good ways. It-- did something for me too, I realized with a little shock.

And this wasn't even my skin-- figuratively. The hair. The identity. There was a sense of freedom, irrational and thrilling. I was genuinely tempted to screw now and talk about the mission later.

But not at Dresden's expense.

“Dresden-- I’m not going to use you as my gay sex guinea pig. I’m not that much of a dick.” I shook my head. “I kind of do want to have sex. But we’re not going to.” 

“Because what, you’ll offend me? I don’t mind that much. I’ve done more dubious things.” He swayed a little closer. “I could use someone tonight. And it’ll be a novel change, not being the gaping amateur.” He leaned in, his cheek brushing my temple. 

Phrased as something I’d be doing for him, it became... very difficult to refuse. Not just altruism, but I have a little guilty pleasure in being needful. “Works for me,” I said, hoping it would. Whatever Dresden said, I knew it would hurt him if I couldn’t get it up. 

He put his hands to my chest-- huge hands, they spanned my pectorals and my pectorals aren’t small-- and carefully felt for the zipper, peeling off the leather vest. I popped the fly on my jeans and pulled down the zip-- I felt like I was coming out of a sausage casing, and I let the appreciative groan come spilling out, gathering up that pleasure and pretending it was Jim thrilling to his first touch. 

Harry echoed me and tucked in close, keeping my jeans trapped at my boots when I wanted to kick them off completely. He was such a skinny little shit he fit in snug, wedged in along the groove of my thighs, his hipbones noticeable even through his jeans, poking into my stomach. He was still taller than me though; if I were going to kiss him now, I’d have to tip my head up. I’ve never kissed anyone taller than me. I had a little rush of something that went straight to my cock, directing the blood flow downward in that way I’d been a bit worried simply wouldn’t happen, exhilarating Brand New Experience or not. I’m not usually the type to get obsessive over my bed partner's size like that, but there was nothing to him but sharp, long masculine lines and giant hands and a big fucking mouth, was there? 

I brought my own hands down and my fingers touched around his middle. “Jesus, Dresden,” I said. “Don’t you eat?”

He snorted at me and leaned down to attach himself to my shoulder, sucking at the muscle. I had said eat, hadn’t I? He palmed a pectoral, fondling it. 

...big guys. 

He’d said that, had been trying to tell me in a way that was more discrete than a liplock, and I hadn’t been listening. Something in me softened a little as I started to really catch on. I couldn’t help it-- I have a bit of chauvinist jerk in me too; I’m just as susceptible to dangerous social narratives as the next guy, of wanting to take care of the less confident, the trapped, those caught by social and internal pressures to deny or hide themselves. And the bizarre amount of trust he was putting in me now-- it made me feel powerful, the better to protect him from all the shit that had shaped his unhappiness, to do this for him.

I’ve seen Dresden’s dossier. I shouldn’t have been surprised that the ‘normative’ part was a big deal to him, and the ‘hetero’ just came along for the ride. 

He needed me, and I wanted to help-- I could get just as big a hit off of that as the way he was nestled against my body. I slid a hand up from his waist, along the mountain range of his spine, his shoulder blades, and cupped the back of his head. He juddered like I’d pulled his foundation out from under him, and folded down against me, hot mouth finding my chest. I got a secondhand hit off his own rule-breaking rush, and then he latched onto a nipple like he’d been waiting for it for years. 

I’d gone most of my life without a partner sucking my nipples. Sigrun had been the first to call my chest ‘splendid tits’ and go face first into it, so I had some context for this, but Harry’s single-minded oral onslaught was as surprising now as her aggressive sex talk had been then. I wasn’t sure how to react-- so I just acted, instead, guiding us to the bed so that the awkwardness of the situation wasn’t exacerbated by the awkwardness of trying to stand up at the same time. It helped; he wanted to get at my chest, and now his height wasn’t an issue. And I could finally kick my boots off and shed the jeans. 

I rolled onto my back and he straddled me, pulling off his t-shirt because it kept getting in the way, his pentacle swinging out from around his neck, and then he flattened himself across me and went back to nursing on my chest, one hand possessively over the nipple he couldn’t suck, fingers curling in the hair around it. 

I touched him, trying not to be clinical-- slide my hands between us and ran them down his skinny chest, had to wonder why he was so into my new pelt when he was pretty damn shaggy himself. I thumbed his nipples and he barely seemed to notice, more intent on exploring me and rubbing the bulge in his jeans against my thigh.

Fair. I wanted to know him, too. To feel the planes that made up his body, so different from mine, reach down to his lean, furry thighs and hairy ass. I could palm both of his buttocks, pinkies on his hipbones, and have my thumbs completely overlap over the cleft of his ass-- there was no fat here, just a little muscle and bone. I pressed down tentatively and pushed his hips against my leg, and he moaned into my chest, started to lick damp swathes across my pecs. I pushed harder and lifted my leg to get in that good, solid dry-hump and I swear he cooed. Like a pigeon. 

“Good?” I asked him, a little unnecessary maybe, going by the sounds he was making-- as long as cooing was wizard for ‘yes yes yes’, or possibly ‘man man man,’ because he was rubbing his face against my chest now, scraping his teeth down my pecs, had his fingers still curled tight in my chest hair. 

I shifted my knee a little and pressed it up behind his balls and he howled, head rearing up from my chest for a dazed second before he was back down and attached to the nipple that hadn’t gotten his mouth before, sucking desperately. 

That softening thing happened again, somewhere deep in my middle, and I slid my hands up from his ass to his waist and manhandled him a little just to hear him coo some more. I could do this. I could make this really, really good for him. I might not have liked the guy much: Harry had always been a mouthy, over-compensating, privileged prick. But he had to be almost forty years old, for all that he didn’t really look it, and for all I knew, I was his first guy, I was the first time he’d truly let himself out of his tightly barricaded closet long enough to breathe, and if he was really into my muscles and Jim’s chest hair and beard, I could give him that.

I undid his fly and started working his jeans down his narrow hips, all sharp bones and lines and sharper thrusts. “This okay?” I asked him, and he popped off my nipple with a smack, biting instead at my jaw, rubbing his cheek against my beard. 

“Yes, yes,” he said, and tried to help, kicking out with his legs, trying to get his boots off. 

“Hold still,” I said, and pulled him up, scooping one hand underneath his ass to plop him down where I wanted him. He went still for a second-- I held my breath, not sure what line I’d just transgressed-- and then slumped boneless against me, a happy, quivering heap. We got his jeans off, and his boxers, and then, after a tiny hesitation, I stripped my briefs off too, flinging them away from the bed. I didn’t have to make the debriefing jokes because I was actually getting laid tonight.

He didn’t waste any time scrambling back up onto me, straddling my thighs and diving right back into my chest, hot mouth closing down on one of my nipples again. I got my hands back around his hips, pushing him down and lifting my leg to get a rhythm going. He was sucking hard enough I wondered if I’d get bruises, riding my leg like he knew what he was doing, his hips rolling beneath my palms. 

I couldn’t get over his dimensions, how unapologetically into me he was, how surprisingly big and hard his erection was as it bobbed against my stomach and rubbed against my thigh. Apparently his bravado and general attention seeking wasn’t compensation. Good thing, really-- there are only so many Cliche Bingo squares one man can reasonably be expected to fill.

“You-- you like this, right?” 

I wasn’t nearly caught up with him in the southerly bloodflow races. I was enjoying it-- it was warm, intimate, good-- but this wasn’t really what I was wired for. “Yeah,” I said, apologetically. “Keep doing what you’re doing.” 

He grunted stubbornly and clambered down the bed, nose snuffling from the hair on my chest down to the trail that had spread across my stomach and then straight between my thighs. He snorted, the puff of air tickling the sensitive skin and firing off random nerves, little shots of stimulation that didn’t connect with my brain. 

I grunted, surprised, flexed up a little, an accidental reverse crunch, held down by Harry’s weight on my legs. What there was of it. He nuzzled up the crease of my thigh and licked the sweat-damp skin with a happy little ‘mmmm’ sound. 

I felt... objectified. Really. In a fun consensual way, not an anonymous pressure way. Harry’s mouth was all over me, he was taking me apart by pieces and cataloguing and savoring everything that signified Man. He was so needy, so hungry for my body, going for me with every sense-- his tongue, his snuffling nose, his grasping fingers teasing through the whorls of thick hair he’d put on me in the first place. 

“That’s good,” I told him, a little relieved and mostly just enjoying the way my dick had firmed up, butting against his face as he went spelunking between my thighs. 

“You’re so big,” he murmured, and then palmed me with a hand that nearly belied his point. 

“MMmaaa,” I said agreeably, as he brought my dick at his mouth and licked. 

I had a jerky moment where I almost pulled away from him, years of safe sex common sense making me want to push him off and grab a condom before he kept going. I knew from Doctor Butters’ notes that wizard bodies didn’t easily harbour or spread infections or disease-- the implications were astounding, frankly, and his reports were kept under tighter lock and key than almost anything else. And thinking of medical reports wasn’t actually keeping me from getting close to the edge, teenage tribal knowledge notwithstanding. 

I knew I was safe; I wasn’t going to catch anything, wasn’t going to spread anything. My back brain didn’t know that though; it was busy sending up gunshots of adrenaline that my body turned into sensitivity and stimulation, screaming at me about what a risk I was taking. And my hormones were rolling in it, reveling in how stupid and careless I was being, breaking into a brand new world, breaking the rules, and it made my stomach tingle and my mind fuzzy and my dick even harder. I gave that to Jim, breaking rules wasn’t something I could afford to get hooked on, and it was almost sweeter for it, his big, magic, wonderful night.

“Aah. Keep it up, Dresden, I’m gonna come on you.”

He gasped sharply and his hips slapped the bed. 

Really? Okay. I could work with that.

“Is that what you want?” I asked quietly, falling into Jim’s persona again, feeling what it would be like-- the first time with a man, pleasing a man, being… devoured like this. I fell face first into that heady rush. Shy, jittery nerves and barely bridled arousal and a strong blush of pride that this man wanted me so desperately, so obviously much. And there was a little bit of me in there too, loving the way Harry was trembling, knowing how much he wanted something I could give him. “Want me to come all over you?”

He made a garbled sort of whining sound and buried his face between my legs, licking up my cock from base to tip. “Stars,” he said, and wrapped his mouth around the head, sucking back off a second later, lapping at it, and repeating the whole process. My hips kept bucking up when I thought I had them under control, cock shoving against his face or into his mouth-- he seemed to like it.

“Wow,” I said, watching him, fascinated. It was a little nasty, a lot sexy-- a lot more than I’d been expecting-- and there was no denying it, the way my dick was smacking him in the face, the way my balls were brushing his chin, I was a man in bed with a man. “You really getting off on that? Want me to come on you?”

His breath caught against my balls, and I sat up a little, rocked my hips so my balls hit him again, swinging against his mouth. His tongue flicked out to catch them and he followed them, mouthing happily, a strange wetwarm feeling just this side of discomfort. 

“You ever done that before? Ever had a man come all over you?”

He jerked his head no, still buried between my thighs. I spread my legs a little, giving him some room; reached down to fist my dick, pulling it out of his way. It twitched happily at my grip, familiar and automatic, just the right pressure. 

“Come on, Harry,” I said. “If you want it, you have to work for it.” 

He pulled back, eyed me-- leaned forward and ran his tongue across my fingers, sucking loose-lipped at my cockhead when he got there. 

“Good boy,” I said, flexing my hips up into my grip, pumping slow and steady on my dick, my body responding, this part familiar, even if the rest wasn’t. But it was fresh and exciting and well, a Brand New Experience, and I was tumbling rapidly closer to orgasm. “Where should I come? On your chest? On your stomach?”

His eyes went wide, his breathing speeding up, sending extra little shocks running across my sensitive skin. 

“Maybe on your face? Should I come on your face?”

He gave a desperate little grunt, rearing up on his knees, hand slamming down between his legs, his dick big and wet and bobbing drunkenly. 

In the end, I didn’t have good enough aim to get it anywhere specific, and when I came, hearing eclipsed by a high pitched whine, heart stuttering, I got it from his face to his knees, painted across his stomach and down his skinny chest. 

He returned the favor, aiming almost inevitably for my chest, making hitched, gasping sounds as he came. Then his eyes closed. I saw him start to sway.

“Nope. No, no, no,” I said and shoved him gracelessly out of the way before he could sprawl all over me and the bed. I lumbered over to the bathroom, limbs heavy and head light, wet down one of the hotel room towels, and scrubbed off my chest before I went to clean him up. 

He helped once he figured out what I was doing, hands tangling, and looked at me uncertainly. 

“Now you can go to sleep,” I told him, climbing back into the bed. He waited tensely for just a second-- and then flopped beside me, snuggling up and tucking his head on my shoulder. It took maybe a minute for his breathing to even out. 

I spent a little longer looking up at the shadowed ceiling, my mind slowly breaking down the evening and taking apart everything it had meant, my body chiming in with faint aftershocks of arousal on the good parts. I was going to have to let Marcone know; technically, because it would be part of my report. And really because it was the decent thing to do-- and because if I ever got compromised down the line, Harry would need to be questioned. ...Johnny was going to be such a prick about it. 

But I had more surveillance to do in the morning, and I focused on Harry’s breathing until my head quieted down, and eventually I slept too.

* * *

We’d left the curtains open, and the room was washed out with pale grey light when I woke up. It was stuffy, smelt undeniably of sweaty bodies and sex, but the covers were warm and the mattress soft and deep, and I stayed where I was for a few minutes, eyelids heavy, mind blank. Beside me, Harry was cocooned in the topsheet, putting out heat like a bony sun, muttering and twitching like a dog chasing rabbits. 

I was up though, and years of conditioning had made me forget how to fall back asleep, so I rolled from the bed and over to the window, unlocking it and sliding it up enough to get a cool, damp breeze whispering through the room.

“What?” Harry said, and sat straight up. He looked like a cockatoo.

The sun came up behind me, throwing pink and gold across Harry’s face, his ridiculous crest of hair, the bed covers, the wall. It glinted off his pentacle, the red gem in the centre, and tingled when it hit my skin, like carbonation, tonic water against my nose, just for a second. 

Harry made a soft little sound, mostly air, and my chin stopped itching. 

Sunrise. I brushed a hand over my head, although I knew what I would feel: my familiar buzz cut. My chest was back to its usual sparse coat, the thick treasure trail gone from my belly, my face only as stubbly as it ever got in the morning. 

“It’s only seven,” I grunted, and Harry blinked at me, eyes not quite focusing. He scrubbed a hand over his face, up through his hair, which didn’t help the way it was all standing on end. “I’m going for a shower. Go back to bed if you want.” And despite how frank he’d been last night, if there was a hetero freakout impending, I wanted to be where there would be a closed door and some running water between us.

The water pressure was good, and I stayed under it for a long while, letting steam fill up the little bathroom, letting my skin get soft and red. I didn’t hear any sounds of a hasty escape from out in the bedroom, but I’d left the door unlocked, and I eventually did hear Harry come in, said I didn’t mind when he asked, and stepped out of the way of the shower spray just as he flushed. I brushed my teeth, shaved, and by the time I walked back out, towel held around my waist, Harry had the little coffee maker going and the room smelt almost fresh from the breeze, the sun up and bright.

I felt bad about my prediction of a hetero freakout. He wasn’t distancing himself from me. He wasn’t scrubbing himself clean, desperately washing off the smell of sex. He was relaxed enough that the little coffee maker hadn’t died, curled in the old padded chair and smiling slightly at the wall, his body language open and sprawling. His hair was still sticking straight up; apparently his trip to the bathroom hadn’t involved looking in the little mirror.

It wasn’t like I could ding him for hypocritical self-denial. I work for John Marcone. I was just bewildered by this side of him. I’d never seen it surface before. I’d never seen him less... angry. 

“Morning, beanpole.” I laid a hand on his shoulder-- you could carve a turkey with those clavicles, I swear. 

“Hey.” He looked up. “Leave me any hot water?” 

“Don’t break the heater.” 

“Thanks, Cujo.” He gangled to his feet and loomed over me, leaning down for a sleepy kiss, half morning breath, half mouthwash. I’d left mine on the counter; he must have borrowed it. 

He was... a lot more tolerable when he was less full of loathing and indignant superiority, I had to say. The kiss was a surprise but it turned out to be a nice one, the bizarre intimacy of it.

“Brush your teeth,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “You can use my toothbrush.” 

He laughed, brushing the back of his knuckles down my freshly shaven cheek. “You’ve gone bald.”

“All of me,” I agreed, and Harry shifted his hand to my head, scrubbed at the still damp bristles of my hair.

“Magic pattern baldness,” he said, dressing his flippantness with an open grin instead of the usual judgemental smirk. “Affects one in one users of magical hair tonic.” 

No, really, what the hell was this? Did sleeping with him automatically make him your friend for life? Any discomfort he’d had with me yesterday had all but disappeared. 

“We can’t all be yetis,” I said, tipping my chin at his darkly shadowed chin and the tuff of chest hair peeking up over his t-shirt collar. “You use that stuff on yourself, or something?”

“Hey, this is 100% Dresden au naturel,” he said, spreading his arms wide. “Keeps me warm in the winter.” 

“Some of us wear sweaters.”

“Looked pretty good on you, though,” he said, and his hand drifted over to my chest. I didn’t say anything, and with a quick glance at my face, he took it at as an okay to keep going and cupped his palm around one of my pecs, his thumb brushing against my sparse chest hair. His other hand trailed up one of my arms, fingers rubbing the wrong way against my arm hair, smearing the water left over from the shower. “You have so many little freckles,” he said. “I couldn’t see them before. You’re not bad, bald.” He paused, smirked, but without hostility. “Looked better with the beard though.”

“Dress code,” I grunted. “Speaking of: you smell.”

“Save me some coffee,” he said, and pressed another kiss to the corner of my mouth before ambling off, about as graceful and coordinated as a five year old’s marionette. 

 

Harry stayed in the shower almost as long as I had, and when the bathroom door finally opened, he was preceded by a billow of steam, his cheeks red and hair dark and wet, waving and winging with no particular order around his ears. He had a towel wrapped tightly around his hips, another draped over his shoulders. Jesus Christ, was he skinny. It was the first time I’d seen him without clothes in the daylight. His ribs stood out; his legs looked like he’d mugged a flamingo for them, and the towel barely hit him mid-thigh. There was muscle there, though, smooth long lines of it, a surprising bulge around his calves, and his shoulders were decent handfuls.

I hadn’t dressed yet, just pulled on a clean pair of briefs and an undershirt, and could feel him eyeing me up the same way I was him. Fair. 

“Coffee’s getting cold,” I grunted at him, and he wandered over to the counter and the coffee maker, topping up a mug he’d left there before, using the last of the coffee and then the last of the little sugar packets and the creamers. 

I’d stolen the chair but he didn’t seem to mind, plopping down on the foot of the bed, hands wrapped around his coffee.

“So when did you start going to _Dick’s_?” I asked him, bluntly, because we should try to talk business somehow.

“Tuesday.”

“...I came to you for the potion on Tuesday.”

“Yeah. Nice of you to bring me into the loop like that,” he added, sarcastically.

“You came here that night.”

“I wanted to get a look at the place.”

“It’s a four hour drive.” I remembered then that his Beetle had been destroyed a few days before he’d been shot, and wondered how he’d actually gotten here. Best our intel could tell, he didn’t have a new car yet; he was still living in the vampire’s boat, for Christ’s sake.

“How else was I supposed to find out what was going on? You weren’t exactly forthcoming.”

“It wasn’t meant to be an invitation. I just needed the potion.” 

He shrugged, with almost none of the defensiveness I was expecting. Who was this, and where the hell was Harry Dresden, wizard and heteronormative asshole extraordinaire? “It’s still my job,” he said. “I didn’t mean to stay,” he added, almost an afterthought, looking sideways out the window. “I was just going to go inside, see if anything jumped out at me. Lay some tripwires. Magic tripwires. But.” 

“You saw the clientele and couldn’t say no?” I said, dryly, and then winced when he blushed. It was like I’d gotten all the asshole that he’d decided not to be about this. 

“It wasn’t what I’d been expecting,” he finally said. “A lot of the guys are really nice.”

“You don’t stand out?” It was a diverse crowd, really, even if a lot of stock was the big and broad farmboy, blue collar type. But he was... Harry Dresden. He was almost seven feet of sarcasm and self-delusion and bad banter. 

“They knew I was new. But I just said I worked on a farm and was stopping by. I grew up on a farm. I know what I’m talking about.”

“And you just kept going back.” I shook my head, made sure to keep my questions from becoming an interrogation. “Doesn’t your boss miss you?”

“Doesn’t yours?” He shot back. Then, almost apologetically: “She can summon me if she needs me. ...I made friends here. It’s a nice place.” 

“You going back tonight?”

“Maybe. You?”

“Yeah.”

“Dressed like that?” he teased, his smile a ghost of itself, but for being recently off a sexual revelation, he wasn’t doing half bad. He was... nice. None of the abrasiveness I was waiting for. Decent company, for a morning after. Even if he was ogling me pretty obviously.

“Would you let me leave the hotel room dressed like this?” I asked bluntly, and he blushed again, scrubbing at his face. 

“So you look good. Stop fishing. Honestly, Cujo. Good dog, and all.” 

I folded my arms, and he paused to watch what that did to my pecs with open interest. “Drop the Cujo. Or I start with the ‘closet case’.” 

“I didn’t mean--” he spluttered. “It bothers you? The ‘Cujo’ thing?” 

“A little.” He looked surprised. “Does it bother _you_? The closet thing?” 

“Less than it used to. First step is admitting you’re in the closet.” He looked down at himself, his glorious towel raiments. “So. Um. You need to get furry again.” 

I figured we’d done enough hard self examination before breakfast, and took the change of subject at face value. “Let me get my aftershave.”

Harry’d brewed me enough of the potion to fill a sports bottle. I’d portioned it out into much smaller glass bottles, wrapped them carefully in bubble wrap, then tucked them into a bag, wrapped that bag in another, and then wedged them safely into the corner of my duffle. There was still most of a bottle left from my first time: it didn’t take much, a few drops, slid on like body oil. I fetched it and a pair of latex gloves.

“Uh,” Harry said, and licked his lips nervously. “I can help with that, if you want.”

I did want. It was tricky work, like getting sunscreen on your own back, and Johnny was the one who was any good at yoga. I handed the gloves over.

He snapped them on. I was half sure he’d split them-- I’d bought the biggest they made, but his hands were bigger than mine, long-fingered and broad-palmed-- but he didn’t, the movements professional. 

“Okay,” he said, and I nodded, passed him the bottle, and shucked off my briefs and shirt. He hesitated for a moment, then tossed the towel around his neck to the floor by my feet, dropping down to kneel on it. “Start from the bottom and work my way up?”

“You’re the expert,” I said. He gave a really half-hearted eye-roll, couldn’t hide his anticipation as he poured a little splash of the tonic and rubbed his hands together to distribute it, then slathered it up one calf. He made quick work of my legs, and then flicked a glance up for permission before he made much, much less quick work of my ass. 

Sigrun’s a groper and a pincher; I have been touched there before. Just not with such... single-minded interest. He didn’t quite drool, but his tongue did peek out of his mouth when he re-oiled his gloves and lovingly applied it to my groin and stomach. He didn’t actually have to stand up-- tall even kneeling-- until he got to my upper chest and shoulders, tracing the shape of my pecs almost blissfully, massaging the last little bit into my hair. He refreshed one last time, just a dab, and cupped my jaw, turning it this way and that, carefully drawing in the lines of the beard and mustache I didn’t have yet. The interest left me feeling strangely sensitized, a little raw. Overshadowed, though, by the feeling of the magic taking effect.

“Ugh,” I said, as my calves started to tingle. 

“I know,” he said, and then: “Long story, don’t ask.”

I watched Harry’s face because I didn’t want to watch the process-- there’d been a little twitch of body-horror the first time I’d felt the tingle of growing hair and looked down to see it happening. His dopey ogle disappeared, and there was a sharp look in his eyes I don’t often see: the look of a professional overseeing an operation, an expert checking for optimal performance. 

It looked surprisingly good on him. He should try that more often. 

“Done,” I said, when the last tingle faded, and brought a hand up to my chest to confirm that there was a new batch of fuzz before I looked down. Less of a shock, now; I ran a considering hand across one pectoral.

“Ooh, play with your tits,” Harry said almost perfunctorily, and I rolled my eyes and cupped both pecs for him, flexing. 

“Like this, big boy?” 

His air of professionalism vanished as fast as it had come, leaving that dopey, appreciative look. I felt a surge of warmth, tucked that into the persona I was calling ‘Jim’, a safe context to feel... pretty, for other men. Jim didn’t have to use his size as a threat; he could accept it as a sexual part of himself, a unique and valuable thing, especially where skinny, dark-eyed men were concerned. Being big and furry made him special, made him feel special. I could understand where this guy was coming from. And how he could really love it when a guy like Harry started tripping over his tongue around him.

“You look good with the hair,” Harry said quietly. 

I felt myself smiling. “Test run?” I offered, and opened my arms.

* * *

I stayed in bed for another twenty minutes after Harry had gone, my brain meandering through a post-coital, piss-poor attempt at sorting out How I Felt About This and What This Meant For Me without digging too deep into self-absorbed navel gazing, or tripping over the little aftershocks of pleasure, fresh new buttons tied up with my masculinity in ways I’d never really been able to afford before.

Eventually I shucked the sheets and headed to the bathroom, scrubbing down carefully with a facecloth so I didn’t undo the work of Harry’s potion, made another little pot of coffee, poured myself a cup and added one of the little low calorie sweeteners Harry had ignored in lieu of all the cream and sugar, and pulled out my laptop. I made fast work of typing up a quick set of summary notes for the first night of surveillance for Marcone. There was no pussyfooting around what happened with Harry; we might have used oblique terms, but all the paperwork that hit Marcone’s desk was full-disclosure. It was going to be like dealing with a wet cat. I was only so sympathetic: John knows how I feel about his self-flagellation and his love/hate approach to Harry. 

I Cc’d Gard and then got dressed, giving her just enough time to read it before she met me down in the dining room for a lateish breakfast, because either way I’d be filling her in on the details, and that saved me from having to say some things twice.

Mrs. Crowder had put out a full spread for us and seemed content to putt around the kitchen while we ate, giving Gard free reign to eye me up and down. Mrs. Crowder was apparently none the wiser that I’d spent the night with a strange man in my room and Gard had spent it bunked in with Moss a few blocks away (she sighed and handed me a folded up ten over the creamer, and I swore that if Moss didn’t make fun of my night, I wouldn’t ask him if he had any dry cleaning to pick up), and we tried to keep our voices down to keep it that way.

“He has good taste, the wizard. A chest like your deserves attention. When we are alone, you must reenact this for me.” She gestured vaguely down her own front. “I am impressed,” she added, dipping a little soldier of toast into her soft boiled egg. “I did not think he had it in him. His Liege Lady has taught him well.” She chewed, leaning over to peer down my shirt. “I wonder if he has met his Liege Lord, yet; you have perhaps helped make theirs a more fruitful acquaintance.” 

I pulled a face-- reality of the Winter Court or no, my childhood can only take so much trauma-- and buttoned up the top button of my shirt, enjoying her disappointed sigh. “Anyway,” I said. “We’re going to have to work with Dresden on this.” I plowed on before she could break in, her eyebrows bobbing. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to shake him, and it’s better to pool our resources then waste our time infighting.” 

“Agreed. He will meet you tonight?”

“He didn’t say, explicitly,” I admitted. “But that’s the impression I got.”

She nodded, pouring a cup of orange juice. “Very well. We will prepare for him tonight. I am glad there will be a friendly pair of eyes on you, Raudr.” 

“Oh there are will be lots of _really_ friendly eyes on me,” I said, and we shared a smile over the rest of breakfast.

* * *

I checked a few times throughout the day, but John didn’t reply to my email. Eventually I gave up, texting him over a pre-club meal at the diner across from Dick’s. 

_-Getting ready for night two. Anything new from the couriers?-_

I’d finished half my salad and most of my sandwich before I got a reply. 

_-No. Stay focused on the job.-_

A server passed by and refilled my water. I nodded my thanks and drained half of it while I debated what to say back to John. My message wasn’t limited by the medium so much as by the reception on the other end: John’s been stupid about the wizard since they first met. And if I wanted any chance of having a conversation about this with him, or to even break through his sulk, we were going to have to do this face to face. 

Finally, I texted back:

 _-You too. I’ll keep you posted.-_

and stuck my phone in my jacket pocket. Wet fucking cat. 

“Gard says to meet her behind the bar in ten,” Moss said, looking down at his own phone. “She got her stuff.” 

A rune for me to pass on to Harry, since a radio would be useless and he probably wouldn’t stoop to accept one anyway. A piece of magical equipment that did the same thing for the same purpose would be totally different than a radio dipped in BLOOD MONEY, of course. I was up to teach freshman English next semester; I just needed to remember to use his level of engagement as practice for the papers I’d be grading. ...And not sleep with the students. Even if that did make Harry easier to take.

He wasn’t that bad; I should stop being such a dick about him. To him, of course, was still open game. He gave as good as he got, anyway. And he gave pretty good, let me tell you.

I signalled our server for the bill. “All right. Let’s go.”

* * *

I paid my cover this time, trading a sheepish grin for Greg’s knowing one. “Jim. Didn’t know if I’d see you back,” he teased. “You left pretty quickly last night.”

I mumbled and shuffled, puffed up a little with Jim’s shy pride, my own good mood settling in and easy to broadcast, and Greg gave me a laughing smack on the shoulder and told me to head on in. “Your skinny friend is already here.”

I didn’t look for Harry, but it didn’t take him long to find me. I’d just gotten a beer and had turned from the bar when a man stepped in from nine o’clock, as wide as me but with a lot more belly and a few inches less height. He’d barely had a chance to open his mouth before Harry slid in between us, wedging an arm behind my back. 

“Hey,” he said to the new guy. “Carl. You’ve met Jim, haven’t you? Jim, this is Carl.”

My eyebrows didn’t rise because I’m a professional, but Carl’s did, and then he pulled out some spectacular smile lines. “Was just about to make his acquaintance,” he said. “Friend of yours, Harry?”

“Just met,” Harry said after a beat too long, because he’s a master of deception like that.

Luckily Carl took it the best way he could and reached a proper conclusion, if not the proper conclusion, understanding lighting up his face. “I see,” he said. “It’s nice to meet you, Jim. Come say hi to me and the guys if you’d like. We’re over there,” he pointed at a big table, a few men seated around it, and excused himself to get a drink.

Well, I had been trying to set up my local identity; Harry had certainly helped me gain some credibility. He helped some more after that, following me to the table I picked, scooting his chair over close enough to shout in my ear.

He put a hand on my leg, fingers dipping down the inside of my thigh. “Kyle says another guy hasn’t come in this week-- Mark Edelson.” The music was louder tonight, the dance floor more crowded. Harry pressed close against me, his skin hot through his shirt and jeans. “He was going to introduce us, but hasn’t seen Mark since at last weekend, and he’s normally in at least twice a week.” 

“You still cruising for dates?” I teased. “Jim’ll be hurt, after that little territory display.”

“What?” 

“Carl,” I said. “You gotta let me talk to other people. Don’t forget why I’m here. I need the attention.”

He frowned, only a little bit of pout around his lower lip. “We’re here for the same reason, “Jim”. I’m not going to forget.” He paused, awkward. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”

Jim gave a goofy smile and reached out to tap his shoulder. “Naw, beanpole. You can show me around.” I dug into my pocket and pulled out Gard’s rune. “Take this,” I said. “Snap it if you need to call for Gard. And go stand over there for a minute.” I pointed over at the bar. “Get a drink or something.”

He stared at me, confused, and I pulled out my phone, making eyebrows at him until he went. 

_-New name for the list-  
-Mark Edelson-_

Gard texted back a moment later. 

_-Got it. How’s it going?-_

I shot a look over to the bar-- Harry was still there, leaning over on his elbows, talking with the bartender. He look good. Comfortable. He had what I recognized as his flirtatious face on, but casual, more relaxed than he’d been last night.

_-So far so good. D’s chatting up the bartender. He’s about two minutes from flashing some cleavage for a free shot.-_

_-Tell him 2 stick to leg. Enough to spare.-_ was Gard’s opinion, and I smiled as I powered my phone off and tucked it away. It was gearing up to be a good night.

 

Harry turned out to be a pretty decent tour guide. Apparently he’d managed to meet what must have been a quarter of the crowd at some point over the week, and introduced me to them all. I think most people got the impression he was showing off his new boyfriend, and I could work with that. He seemed honestly eager to show me around, and either his acting really was better than I gave him credit for, or he was more at ease here than I’d ever seen him. Although to be fair, I hadn’t seen him in a situation that didn’t involve some sort of threat to life, limb, or the whole planet before. 

Kyle, Harry’s new friend, was a gold mine of an information source-- in his teasing quest to find guys who’d eat Harry, or Jim, or both of us up, he dropped every name we’d managed to dig up as possible Missing Persons and potential Nod runners, and a few more to look into. He would have liked to get to know Jim a whole lot better, but was happy to respect the hand Harry kept sliding onto my thigh or resting on my arm, and seemed to know everyone who passed by.

I used the trips to the bar to text Gard, passing along the names and keeping her updated on the general mood of the club; she would establish her identity later in the night, stay through to closing to get a feel for any magical signatures floating around, check out the recent decoration. She sent me a picture of Mark Edelson at one point, confirmed his missing status. He was a big friendly looking guy, round face, slightly upturned nose, brown eyes, pale red hair. Harry would probably have liked him if they’d managed to meet.

Harry followed me on one of my bar trips, keeping close enough to bump hips, and not just because there wasn’t that much room to move around in. I gestured with my phone at him. “You’re throwing off my game.”

“You’ll survive,” he told me, holding up two fingers to the bartender. “You’re doing pretty good so far.” The unspoken ‘for a straight guy’ hung between us, but not nearly as loud as the unspoken ‘Although I’ve maybe always been a straight guy too and you saw what I was like last night and this morning, so I have a lot to sort out and no real history of responding to things in a mature or proportionate manner’. 

“So are you,” I said, taking my beer from the bartender with Jim’s shy smile. “You ever really... guys before?” I floated my fingers, gesturing at the crowd. And then locked down on my expression before I cringed. I had no real right to ask that, and could have kicked myself; Harry had already been pretty forthcoming this morning, and the last thing I needed to do was throw a well-deserved Wizard Sulk in the gears, but Harry was already looking down, fiddling with the label on his bottle and shrugging one bony shoulder.

“It’s not the same. You know. In Faerie.”

I snorted before I could stop myself-- these beers had to be hitting me harder than I’d realized. This would need to be my last one.

“No, really,” he said, more earnestly than defensively. “It’s like. Faerie guys. All the faeries. They’re too perfect and so much of them is glamour and it’s just like dreaming. It’s like their food.” He flicked a glance around to make sure nobody heard us, because this would sound really strange to people not in the Seelie/Unseelie loop. “The food-- it’s there, it can sustain you, but it’s slick and shiny and... there’s a reason you can trade food with the fae. Mortal food. Mortal everything. There’s weight and substance here that you don’t get there. It means different things. I have to spend time on this side,” he added, after a beat. “To keep things real.”

I didn’t tell him he was going to pull something stretching like that; I figured he was justifying a little, but he had been the one diving face first into my chest and groin last night, and had been pretty straightforward with me about liking guys at all, so he probably wasn’t as deep in denial as I would have thought a week ago. And I’d been to the Nevernever. My memories of it didn’t make sense; it had been like dreaming, like he said, and now, it was like trying to recall a dream, or remember an era I only knew through period dramas and historical site tours. Harry spent more time in the Nevernever in a week than I hoped ever to in my life: I could defer to his expertise. Even if it did sound like it wasn’t just the food that was slick and shiny, if you know what I mean.

A few more men had gathered at our table when we got back, cutting our seating options to half of what we needed. I took the one chair left, patted tentatively, teasingly at one knee-- and suddenly had a lapful of wizard nestled up against my chest. 

I laughed despite myself, not exactly faking the blush at the chuckles that came our way, and wrapped an arm around his torso. I could feel his chest vibrating as he talked, but I wasn’t focusing on what he was actually saying. Distracted. I was a little tired. 

The conversation happened around me, a crescendoing and decrescendoing wall of chatter and laughter and shouting over music. I rested my head on Harry’s shoulder, eying his stubble. I was tired and warm, a pleasant little buzz of arousal and good company dancing under my skin. I kind of wanted to lick it-- the stubble, run my tongue up Harry’s face, see what he’d do, how it would feel. Maybe I’d like it. He certainly liked my beard. I rubbed my chin into his shoulder a little, got his neck with a passing glance, and he gave a rewarding little shiver.

The look he turned on me was half amused, half irritated. I smirked back, and wanted to kiss him. I think he could see it, because his eyes got wide-- I held his gaze, dared him to lean in. He jerked away just as the world started to narrow down to nothing but his eyes and the promise of something greater behind them.

Shit. Soulgaze. Right. Christ, I needed to wake up. I wasn’t thinking straight. So to speak.

“You okay?” Harry said, leaning close to murmur in my ear, and a little spike of warm and want went right from where his lips brushed my earlobe to my cock. I wanted to kiss him again, to tip my head back and pull on his shirt to get him in the right spot and kiss him until he couldn’t breathe.

Definitely too tired. My limbs felt heavy; my thoughts were chasing themselves in a circle of lazy arousal and happy stupor. I must have slept poorly last night. I didn’t normally have trouble sleeping in hotel rooms; maybe Harry was a bad sleeper and had kept micro-interrupting me last night. Maybe it was the heat. 

“Time to go,” I said.

“You leaving us, Jim?” It was one of the guys I’d met tonight-- Jason Pym. At least my recall wasn’t shot. 

“Calling it a night,” I rumbled. “Getting tired.”

“Yeah, you had a late one, last night,” Kyle said, and a shot Harry a teasing look. 

I ducked my head at the laughter that followed, grinning sheepishly, but it wasn’t cruel, and when Harry slid off my lap with a “I’ll walk you out,” it turned knowing but supportive, inclusive. A joke, but one we were sharing in. I could see why Harry liked this place; Jim did too. 

The world tipped pleasantly when I got to my feet, the edges gone fuzzy. Those beers had definitely been stronger than I’d thought. I told Harry to be good and pulled out my phone, texting Gard that I was headed out.

A woman at the bar-- her henna-washed hair tied back in a scarf, tattoos spilling out of her sleeveless men’s t-shirt-- checked her phone, and caught my eye in a mirror as we passed. She looked nothing like the type-A businesswoman that locals would have noticed in town yesterday, but everything like a slightly hipster blue-collar lesbian with an organic bakery or a rock-and-roll barber shop. Gard didn’t quite wink as Harry supported me out of the bar, and I knew that the mission was in good hands while I got half an hour of sleep. Maybe half an hour of sex, too. It would help; the endorphins would be good for killing any stress. 

We stopped and Harry got his coat from the check; Greg smirked cheekily at the pair of us, and wished us “ _ever_ so sloppy seconds” on the way out. The wind hit me as soon as we were through the door. Cool. Damp. Fresh. It cleared my head for a minute, sharpened up what I was seeing. “I’m okay,” I told Harry, hovering at my side, one hand on my back. “Really. Just a little tired, gonna sleep. It was getting hot in there. You coming back with me?” 

“Just going to make sure you get home safe,” he said, flipping into flirtatious chivalry. 

“And to bed safe?” I was smiling again, and he grinned back self-consciously. 

“It’s only polite,” he said. 

I was too tired to think much-- maybe should have been my clue-- but when Harry kissed me in the hotel room I got some of my clarity back, was able to stave off sleep long enough to roll into bed with him, both of us grinding against each other, a sleepy, happy frot that was easy and familiar after a grand total of one previous night and one morning of experience. He came, accepted that I was too tired to but was enjoying that he had with surprisingly good grace. 

When he stood up to get the towel, because my head was starting to spin, I said: “Half an hour, okay? Just half an hour, can’t miss another whole night,” and then was out hard before he got back to wipe me off. 

The dream was slow and sluggish and hot and everything I’d been trying to shake off. Things felt warm, slick. And they _felt_ \-- even only half-lucid I knew that it was rare to have such vivid sensation in a dream, tried to hold onto that thought even as I was distracted by the texture of the sheets.

I was in the hotel room bed, but alone, tangled in blankets that I struggled out of like I was swimming for the surface of a pool, lured by a sound or just the knowledge that there was something waiting for me. Half-hearted arousal hung in my groin like a stone, and I groped for my cock as I staggered into the bathroom.

The bathroom was different in my dreams. The little mirror over the sink was now a big mirror, the sink nowhere to be seen, and I caught my reflection in it with a clarity you never get in dreams.

Big. I was so big. Covered in fur. Sensual. Sexual. Male. Half-hard cock bobbing between my thighs, snuggling in the muscle there. 

This was what Harry had seen. All those men who’d looked at me in the club. This is what they’d seen, what they’d wanted. I wanted it too. I wanted them to want it; I deserved for them to want it, want me. I was so big. Every part of me was broad; how had I never noticed? My forearms, my fingers, my calves, my thighs. I squeezed at my pecs, fingers buried in the hair, thick and so red, dug them into my muscle. There was the echo of a sweet ache, like a masseuse’s fingers digging into a tight knot. 

I hit something cool and solid and realized I’d been walking towards the mirror. Sweat squeaked between glass and skin and I rubbed myself against my mirror image, the condensation from my breath against the glass getting things wetter, slicker, but not obscuring my view. 

My cock looked huge. It bobbed heavily between my legs, looking as thick as a beer can around, almost as long as my forearm, my balls swinging and full underneath. It couldn’t have always been this big, could it? But it was in my reflection, red and heavy, and when it rubbed against the mirror, I could feel something like lips around it, a mouth stretching, stretching to let it in, slick and wet and suction, unresisting when I thrust, sliding in deeper, squeaking up against the glass.

My chest pressed against the mirror, cool and wet with my sweat, my pecs pushing up into a deep V of cleavage. My nipples were hard little specks hidden in the thatch of fur; no wonder Harry had tried to swallow them whole. I pushed harder against the glass, watched my chest bunch and flex. I had amazing tits. I wanted someone with tits like mine. I wanted mine, under my hands, in my mouth, I wanted hands and mouths on me, hot and biting and getting me wet and wanting all over.

My ass flexed as I thrust and thrust into the imaginary hot, tight dark, the mirror squeaking as I smeared precome and sweat up it. My ass was two perky, solid cheeks I would just be able to grip my hands around, to squeeze together and pull apart, skin pale beneath the red fuzz all over me. I thrust harder, watching my dick wag, giant, my ass flex, my chest slide against the mirror.

I was red all over. I was big all over, a giant, sexy, bear of a man.

There was so much hair. My beard, my chest, my stomach, around my cock. I could smell the way my sweat, my sex caught in it, trapped there, powerful and wanting. My muscles flexed under the fur, my thighs were like fucking tree trucks, my chest and ass round and high, waiting for someone to touch them. My arms kept distracting me, how thick across they were-- when had they gotten that big? No wonder Harry had wanted me so badly. I was huge, I was gorgeous, I was big and red and could pin him to the ground, could fill him up and be filled and come all over him and make everything I did the best he’d ever had. He’d beg and beg me for more.

I could see us, how we’d look, rolling against each other, my ass out, perky and full, the deep dip of my back, the solid wall of my shoulders, my arms holding him down, pressing his head to my chest while he sucked and sucked at one of my pecs, my cock rubbing all over his skinny little stomach, as thick and hard as he could ever want it. 

There was something over us, reflected in the mirror, far away, over the door out in the room. A mark, red and blinking. I didn’t know what that meant, tried to see around it, couldn’t focus on it-- just the sounds we were making, the squeak of my skin against the glass, hot on cool, wanting and desperate and needing this like nothing I’d needed before. Is that how Harry had felt? Why he’d gone home with me, rubbed himself against my body, buried his face in my chest, swallowed my tits and my cock? No wonder he’d fucked me when he’d never fucked a man before. 

That red light kept blinking, distracting me, pulling my focus from how I looked, how big and strong and gorgeous and sexy I was.

I’d never wanted like this. I’d never wanted a man like this. I’d never been a man like this. I wanted it all so bad.

I could hear Harry saying my name, desperate and loud. 

_Hendricks._ His hands were on my arms.

“Hendricks! HENDRICKS!” There was light along with the voice-- it split through my brain like an alarm clock and the world got heavy and painful and real as I woke up with a lurch, mouth foul and dry with sleep and limbs aching. 

I was in front of the bathroom mirror, the sink gone, the mirror itself distended unnaturally, the wall behind it eclipsed, and my arms were sunk up to the elbows in it, a vise-grip of something on the other side hauling me forward. A portal. I’d seen them before, not like this, but I could recognize what was happening. Harry was braced against the doorjam, pulling me back, face straining-- I didn’t know how long he’d been there, but he had to be the only reason the mirror hadn’t eaten me whole. 

“What?” I said stupidly, but my body was waking up faster, losing the dreamy arousal and pulling backwards. My reflection in the mirror wavered and snarled at me, Gard’s warding rune flashing angry red from the other room. 

Dreams. Dreams, I’d been drugged, why hadn’t I seen it, why hadn’t I sounded the alarm before I left the club-- this was the point of the operation, I was supposed to be the tempting bait, I’d _known_ , but somehow I’d assumed I’d be approached or kidnapped physically, not.... 

Whatever was on the other side of the mirror had mostly human-ish hands, because I could feel each finger digging cruelly into my wrists. My bare feet slipped on the bathroom floor, and only Harry’s support kept me from skidding further into the gleaming portal to the Nevernever. My shoulder-joints were starting to ache. My cock was painfully hard, jutting out, despite the hurt and fear-- the drugs, again-- and drooling so much it looked like I was coming. I stepped in the mess puddled on the floor, lost my footing, and Harry yanked me back again when I lurched forward.

“It’s stronger than me,” I said, trying to get my brain into gear, trying to think tactically. Harry swore. 

“Different plan,” he said. “Can you hang on for a second?” 

I sucked in a breath and then hauled myself back with all my strength-- I gained maybe an inch, but it let me brace a foot on the base of the toilet. The ceramic creaked warningly-- it hadn’t been installed with close quarters wrestling in mind. 

Harry let go and I realized how hard he’d been pulling and how strong he had to be as I jerked forward, the balance of power shifting between me and the thing in the mirror, and the handprints he’d left behind on my arms started to ache and promised to bruise. 

“Dresden,” I said urgently, as the thing on the other side gave a giant yank and my foot slipped off of the toilet. I had nearly no leverage, now, and my unseen fingers were starting to tingle from lack of circulation. 

“Coming!” He barrelled back into the bathroom, a ball of something in his arms. “Okay. We go through on three.” 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” 

“One!” He shook his head fervently. “Two!” He threw himself at my back and I made the split second decision to trust him, relaxing into the grip inside the mirror as he plowed into me with a grunted “Three!” 

His momentum and the thing pulling me combined to send us through the mirror like a battering ram, and I went shoulder-first into the Nevernever and plowed into a low-slung, muscular form on the other side. It hadn’t seen that coming; its grip loosened up and I got my hands free, driving an elbow at a pale, wide face. We were in a distorted version of the bed and breakfast, angles all wrong, in a hallway with mirrors instead of doors-- my assailant all wrong too, squat, abnormally muscular and not remotely human, but slightly familiar, unsettlingly attractive. 

It reared back to slap me-- long, simian arms-- and I rolled with the blow instinctively. It still knocked me to my knees. I could see myself reel and stumble in the mirrors that surrounded us-- was there one for each room? It looked roughly like the layout of the the rooms, but there were too many, way too many-- 

“HOLD.” I looked over my shoulder in surprise. Harry’s deep voice had come like thunder. I stared at him, at the frost that crackled in the air around him, crystals of ice spreading from the ground where his bare feet touched it. For a second he was a stranger, a completely unknown potential hostile. “HAMMERTIME.” 

...still Harry. 

“Whose hall do you freeload in, succubus?” he said with a scowl, the wooden rod in his hand extended and glowing with a hot red light that glinted strangely off the frost. “I’ve never seen you in Mab’s Court, but you don’t smell like Summer.” 

“This isn’t Court business, Knight,” it said, with a deep male-ish voice like liquid sex. It hit me in the groin and the adrenal glands all at once-- I really wanted to sleep with it and I really wanted to beat it to death for what it had done. Possibly at the same time, which was sort of a sickening feeling. “Your Queen won’t sponsor your intervention here. What right do you have to set yourself between me and my prey?” He, I decided. Despite the lack of sex characteristics, I was going to call him a he. Lazy of me, maybe, but it helped make this less alien, just another stand off with some minor criminal.

“Well, you just grabbed my mortal lover,” Harry pointed out, stepping forward to impose himself between the succubus and me. “I think you just gave me plenty of reason.” 

The succubus didn’t do expressions like humans did expressions, but for a second I saw a flash of pure ‘oh shit’ in his flat, cat-pupiled eyes. Then he turned his attention on Harry, capital A Attention, an almost physical presence I hadn’t realized I’d been feeling, a hot hurting arousal like what had flooded my dream. “So it was you my morsel was dreaming of so prettily then, Knight. You are quite pleasing in your desire yourself.”

Harry’s face went... 

Nasty.

The Nevernever moved around him strangely. I didn’t know if what I was seeing, the pulsing darkness up one arm and across his chest, if it was his physical signifier, his strange visual metaphor or mine. But he was pissed off. 

“Don’t,” he said, a tension in his voice that drove me up to my feet, my reflection rearing up in all the mirrors around me. Shit, I was completely naked, wasn’t I, my dick still half hard-- 

“Don’t,” Harry said again, deep and menacing. “Everyone tries that on me. Get your hand out of my pants, succubus. Or I’m taking it off.” 

“Calm yourself, Knight. I am sure that we can--” 

I saw his stance shift: “Dresden! He’s going for the mirr--” 

The succubus moved way too fast. Supernatural things have a tendency of doing that, like inertia is a scary story they heard once and tried to forget about as fast as possible. He was through one of the mirrors in a split second and there was a glowing ball of energy behind it-- 

I threw myself flat without thinking about it, Harry on top of me, whirling his duster over both of us, and all the mirrors shattered. 

The glass-- or whatever mirrors this side of the Nevernever were made out of--fell around us, a downpour of silvery, glinting shards. They bounced off Harry’s duster like rain off a metal roof, clinked and ringing when they hit the ground around us. There had to be more than just the duster protecting us, I realized after a second, there just wasn’t enough coat to cover us both-- I risked a glance up, saw little sparks of blue light above my head, Harry’s upheld wrist and expression of concentration. 

When it stopped, Harry kept his hand around my elbow, drawing me up beside him slowly. I raised an eyebrow at the chivalry but he didn’t notice, instead seething at the broken mirrors.

“Slimy creep,” he snarled, “look at all of this. He had fucking window service. His own soul-sucking drive-in.” 

“Where does he fit in with the Nod deal?,” I said, squinting down at all the glass, or whatever, on the floor. “He’s obviously in on it-- using it to grab victims, but is he a distributor, a cooker, a broker--?” I couldn’t find the light source here; there was light to see by, everywhere, but it was reflecting in every direction, distorting the already distorted hallway-like room-like hybrid landscape, like something out of a Dali and Escher collaborative building project. “We don’t have the whole picture yet. And we’re going to go snow blind before long,” I added, gesturing. 

“Okay,” Harry said, sucking at his teeth. “Hold on a second.”

He squatted back down, pale legs looking suddenly like nothing but knees where they stuck out from his boxers-- that was all he had on, and an oversized t-shirt, one of mine that I’d worn earlier, probably left on the floor. It was better than naked, at least, but neither of us were really dressed for the occasion. 

“Cover your eyes,” he said, squinting up at me. He waited until I’d shielded mine, then pushed out his right hand: “ _Ventas reductas_.” 

It wasn’t the whirlwind I’d seen him will up before, but a gentler, direct blast of air, like one of those high powered hand dryers. The mirror shards in front of him gusted up, blown back, a few whipping around. He turned an awkward circle, staying low; I bit down on my laughter, tried to focus instead on watching him in action. 

I’ve seen the aftermath of his spells-- this wasn’t going to rip down any trees. He wasn’t playing fast and loose with mirror shards... or whatever it was. He cleared a path with small, controlled bursts of air-- was it just that I’d never seen him work like this, or had his control gotten better since he first got into Marcone’s car and fried most of the electronics? 

John eats this kind of thing up. Even I can’t deny that seeing a magic user push things around just by wanting to is awesome, in the classical sense. 

“Okay,” he said, once he’d cleared a wider circle around us, tossing me the duster. “Use this as cover. ...And clothes,” he added, after a second. “Cover as much as you can right now.”

The duster couldn’t fit across my shoulders-- not as a coat. I held it across my chest, wrapped as much of it around me as I could as he murmured another ‘ventas’ spell, and the wind came back, stronger this time, to whip up dust-devils in the glittering debris, tight, shimmering cyclones that swept paths through the shards. There was a slithering sound as they fell on top of each other-- crystalline pieces of something, like mica, but sharp around the edges, and I noticed Harry going out of his way not to let any of them touch us. 

I straightened when he was done, pulling down my improvised cloak and went about turning it into an improvised something else. I settled on a sort of toga, the duster’s sleeves tied sideways around my neck, the belt barely large enough to buckle over my ribs. It left me cold on the right side but covered all the important bits, and the heavy leather was a hell of a lot warmer, and provided a hell of a lot more protection, than wandering around the Nevernever naked. 

Speaking of: “Any idea where we are?” 

Harry had his pentacle out, holding it in front of him like a hypnotist from an old cartoon, eyes slightly unfocused. I almost expected him to say he was getting “veeeery sleepy.” The red jewel in the centre reflected back the sourceless light, and I settled back to wait for him, warily eyeing the surroundings. Let the wizard wizard. Even if it left him staring off into space. I guess he trusted me to watch his back.

I knew the mirrors must have all been portals like the one the succubus had been trying to lure me through; and I was willing to put good odds on the succubus blowing them as he went wasn’t just a distraction. Whether or not Harry could get one of the portals opened again, and where we’d end up if he did....

“Right,” he said, dropping his pentacle down to his chest. “We’re lost.”

“Fantastic.”

“But, once we get out of ...here.” He wobbled his hands at the disjointed room/hallway space. “I think I should be able to get a read on where we should go. This place isn’t on the map; I think the sucker made it himself. It can’t be too big-- or too permanent, now that the magic rooting it is gone.” He jerked a chin at one of the piles of mirror shards. “So you've gotta ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky?” he said, in his worst Dirty Harry. 

I gave him the ‘wrap it up’ grunt I give to Marcone sometimes, when he starts getting just a little fond of his own overly cultured voice. 

“Because I have no idea how to get out of here, but the magic feels weakest in that direction.” 

He pointed toward what looked like a sketch of a hallway in someone's grandmother’s house, done from memory, while on LSD. But if I squinted, it almost looked like the hallway at the B&B, and it was as good a guess as any. 

“Feel luckier with a weapon,” I grunted.

“Right pocket,” he said, and I reached into the duster pocket and pulled out a revolver. There was a second of disbelief on my end-- it was actually a Model 29. He’d actually chosen Dirty Harry’s gun to do his cowboy act with. Even if he’d done it ironically, it was still a little-- 

He saw me staring at the gun and said, sharply, “It’s the kind I had before I died. I wanted something familiar, okay?” 

“Okay.” I spun the chambers to check for a load-- he had it full-- and then put back in the pocket, assuring myself I knew the range of motion and could grab it quickly when needed. I nodded to him, and he nodded back, and we started into the twisting Nevernever ahead of us. 

It was eery, walking down the long hallway, having it bend and shift around us, texture and colors and shapes changing and angling out. We moved slowly, both of us barefoot, poorly dressed, but for all the tension the unreal quality of the place created, it seemed abandoned. 

“I can’t get a bead on how big this place is,” I said, as we waited at a corner and he peered around it. It opened into a big spacious room that looked a lot like Mrs. Crowder’s kitchen. A second ago we’d been walking down something anonymous and featureless that had to be a floor of a chain hotel, darker smears on the walls where rooms would have been. “And why is it all hotels?”

“Good set up, if Hoover’s grabbing everyone like he tried to grab you,“ Harry said, peering around the blurry, disjointed kitchen-like room. “Temporary residences, no thresholds to speak of... and with those automatic checkout forms in the chains, no one but the cleaning staff would even notice right away. Hold on,” he stopped, raising his pentacle again, doing the distant stare.

I peered behind us, watching our backs, and the corner we’d just taken was gone. That had been happening; there was no point in trying to remember what turns we’d taken to get here. They weren’t there anymore to take back. 

“Okay,” he said. “We’ve got to be nearing the end of this. I can’t get a full read on it, lots of interference, but there’s definitely something hinky clogging up the air that way-- and our best chance to get out of here. With my luck, they’ll be side by side.” He pointed to the kitchen door that probably wouldn’t be leading to the little back yard on this side of reality, and we pressed on. “We go through there.”

We ended up in a long hallway that bulged out into guest rooms, no doors needed. Another B&B, not Mrs. Crowder’s. 

“How many of these places can there be?” I asked, letting my exasperation out. It wasn’t professional, and maybe I wouldn’t have with a squad, but I was with Harry Dresden, of all people: professional wasn’t going to enter into it. And I was getting freaked out. My back was crawling, my muscles firing with little stress reactions, twitches and hypersensitivity. My dick rubbing against the inside of the duster kept sending little half-aroused, half-painful sparks up my insides, oversensitive and unwelcome. Something had drugged me, had been doing its damnedest to eat my soul. I really hate the Nevernever. 

I went for distraction and intel. “You said he was a succubus. Fill me in: that wasn’t a Raith.”

“No,” Harry shook his head. “Distant cousin, maybe. Looked a lot like the demon the White Court vamps have inside them.”

I tried to keep my mind from going to a half _Alien_ , half _Men In Black_ sort of place. I failed. “And?”

“He was more primal. Less human. The White Court, they have a demon side and a human side-- not like having a Denarian. Think Ego and Id.” 

I wasn’t going to correct his out of date psychology, just nodded him on. 

“It makes them stronger. The demon can heal, the mortal side provides protection against sunlight and iron, makes them part of our world, not this one. Succubuses, incubuses-- they’re pure magic. They can feed better, change shapes-- or be so attractive that they didn’t need to change.” I thought of the succubus’ deep mellow voice and the waves of want he had rolled across my groin, how sexy it had been despite being inhuman and attempting to eat me, and grunted an agreement. 

“In the stories, they’re divided into groups. Succubus and incubus. That doesn’t say much. It’s just what they specialize in eating. Some like male energy, some like female energy. There’s some niche feeders who hit the trans community, or at least the part of it that’s between male and female. But any of them can feed on any of us. They’re all the same soul-eating bastards.” 

My eyebrows jerked up. I had no idea that Harry even knew there was a binary to be outside of. I had to stop underestimating him. 

“What are they? Faerie?”

He nodded. “Felt fae. Didn’t really feel like one of the Courts though.”

Then we were stepping into a narrow hallway, pale pink wallpaper and a blond wood floor, and it morphed and wavered underfoot, and ended up in the diner across from _Dick’s_. The Nevernever-crafted succubus lair version of the diner, at least. We lurched to a stop. There were people here.

There was a man sleeping in the booth a few feet from us. A woman stretched out across the table a few feet from him. Another man in a booth on our other side. A third man on the counter at the bar. A fourth curled up on top of the long, party-of-10 table. They were all dressed the same way we were-- poorly. She had a pair of pajama bottoms and a too-small shirt, the men had a collection of boxers, briefs, t-shirts, one ill-fitting woman’s dress shirt, and the man on the table was wearing just an apron, stained and salvaged looking.

“...Guess we can take those faces off the milk cartons,” Harry said.

I recognized one of the men right away: Stanley Berg, 37, missing for three weeks, his pick-up found near his hotel in the next town over from Paton, close enough that the credit card activity at _Dick’s_ the night before wasn’t suspicious. I couldn’t see the others well enough to ID them, and I only knew the names of a handful of missing persons anway. We’d known the _Dick’s_ location couldn’t have been the only hub; how many people had been stolen away? How many were here?

“Can we wake them up?”

“I hope so. They really shouldn’t be sleeping here.” Harry’s face pulled down, concerned, nervous. If he ever played poker, he’d just be giving his money away. “I’ll check if there’s something keeping them asleep,” he said, moving in on the closest sleeper, Stanley. “Watch my back.” His voice turned resigned. “I’ve got to take a closer look.”

He squatted down, holding his wooden rod loosely but ready in one hand, and leaned in close, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes, briefly, and when he opened them, he was staring intently at Stanley.

Wizard Sight. I’d heard of it, of course. Hell, with ThreeEye, it had practically been my personalized invitation to the shitstorm of Guess What, Ma, Magic’s Real, and the whole kit of demons, werewolves, and vampires that came along with it. But I’d never seen anyone using the Sight before. Turns out, it’s not much to look at.

“Stars,” Harry said, with a slight shudder, still staring too intently for social comfort at Stanley. 

I wondered what people had to think of him: too tall, so skinny, shy and sarcastic and aggressively determined to show you how okay he was really, his deep voice and inability to meet their eyes. The ways he stared off, sometimes, or stared too hard, or talked about magic and monsters without shame. 

My stomach clenched and I had a little surge of protectiveness; I wanted to take care of him. He needed it and it was something I could do. I squashed down on that, ruthlessly; this wasn’t sex and a wished-for experience; this was his life, and the last thing he needed was some chauvinistic throwback trying to run it for him. Christ, Nathan. Check your penis at the door.

“He’s worn out. Something has just leeched him away.” Harry’s expression went stricken, sickish, his gaze tracking down Stanley's body. “He’s definitely been snacked on. And he’s bound, but it doesn’t look too strong--” he reached out, biting his lip with concentration, long fingers just brushing the air in front of Stanley’s groin. “The succubus wasn’t expecting anything to be breaking in from the outside--”

Right on cue, the door behind us-- that hadn’t been there a second ago-- swung open with a bang and the sound of running. Apparently Harry brings his theatrics with him, spreads it out to keep the surroundings appropriately dramatic. I reached out and caught the girl by the shoulder as she barreled past, the sudden stop sending the dirty ball cap she wore flying. Her hair was greasy, short enough that it wasn’t matted, but it was close. She had actual clothing: a stained, smelly pair of jeans, a denim jacket that was too big in the shoulders and too long in the arms, a grubby, stinky men’s undershirt, and worn sneakers.

Harry whipped his head over-- I saw his eyes find us, widen. He made a little ‘oh’ sound, mostly air, and then shook his head, stumbling to his knees.

I didn’t recognize the girl among the missing, but she was compact and muscular, with a complement of ear and facial piercings that crossed the line between ‘liked to have piercings’ and ‘making a social statement’. Fit the general profile of a Nod runner-- physically fit, butch, looked like she hadn’t slept in days. 

“Order up,” she said, clawing at my hand. “Order up.” 

I glanced sharply at the kitchen window. Another face from the missing persons file was setting a pile of neatly packaged bottles there, mindlessly stacking them. 

We’d found the lab. 

“Dresden--” I said, dragging her into a headlock. “Any time!” 

She was fighting back, and though exhaustion made her clumsy she had that limberness and complete ignorance of pain you get with certain drugs. I was worried she’d dislocate an arm or worse as she tried to escape, and she wouldn’t even notice.

“Coming,” he said, standing up quickly, Stanley starting to groan and stir on the bench seat beneath him. “Hold her.” 

“The hell do you think I’m doing?” I grunted, as she twisted bonelessly and somehow got an elbow in my eye. 

He took a deep breath and made an abrupt movement, slicing the air in front of her crotch, muttering quickly. I felt her breathe deeply and then wake up-- and start shouting in sleepy pain a moment later. I let go instantly, and she fell back against me and slid down to sit against my legs, looking dazed. 

Stanley had found his feet and was swaying unsteadily, braced against the table. His knees gave out on him and he crumpled down to the floor, still holding onto the table, looking confused.

“Ding,” said the man at the kitchen window, staggering out of view and leaving the pile of bottles.

Harry and I shared a look; I pulled out the gun; his rod lit back up, as red and hot looking as if he’d just pulled it from a fire.

“Kitchen first,” I said. “See how many are in there. How many are awake. Wake the rest after.”

We went in slowly, leaving the girl and Stanley propped against each other in Stanley’s booth with stern instructions to ‘sit’ and ‘stay’.

It was a meth lab. A magical meth lab. Combined with a haunted house. Sleepwalking men and women wandered through, boiling off things, reducing others, changing out beakers and bottles. A huge man-- shit, that was Mark Edelson-- was strapped to a chair, writhing in lazy pleasure as some kind of glow rose from him and was collected into the mess of glassware and ancient copper tubing. 

Harry’s jaw stiffened and he moved without warning, grabbing the titration equipment-- there was an angry cracking sound as the copper froze solid and broke, ice-crystals spearing out of it all along its length. Edelson sighed and frowned, eyes drifting open, seeing nothing. 

“He’s bleeding energy,” Harry said tensely. “Something in the succubus’ saliva. Like goddamn mosquitos.” 

“...literal or metaphorical?” I asked, and got a curt nod at the latter. At least we didn’t need to be on the lookout for spit bombs. “Can you patch him up?” I said, warily watching the sleepwalkers, who didn’t seem to notice that the flow of the drug had been disrupted, the almost gaseous glow dispersing.

“I can do some first aid. Enough to get him out. But he’ll need a serious looking over by someone good at healing. Most of these people will.” Harry’s voice was clipped, angry. “It’s just letting them wear themselves out.”

“Maybe why it’s going for the strong ones,” I said.

Harry jerked his head in a nod, reaching out to grab the leather straps binding Mark to the chair. The leather aged under his hands, twisting and darkening, going brittle and snapping when he pulled on it. 

“Hey, big fella,” he said, sticking his wooden rod into his waistband and carefully laying his other hand on Edelson’s arm. “You with me, here?” He reached out and did the slicing thing in front of Edelson’s groin. 

Edelson mumbled something, trying to get his arms and legs sufficiently coordinated to get out of the chair. He didn’t quite manage, slumping sideways into Harry’s arms, and Harry pulled him up to his feet. 

“I’ll break the binding on the Nodheads,” he said, “if you can keep them from wandering off.”

I took Edelson’s weight from him with a surprised grunt-- Harry really was way stronger than he looked-- and got him shuffled over to the door, then the next guy that Harry sent stumbling towards me, and the woman after. 

“I wish Mouse were here,” Harry grumbled, helping an especially staggery man over to me. “He would make this go so much faster.”

We got them all eventually, and led them back out into the not-diner, Harry in front, me corralling them from behind. We got them all to the one long table, the man on top in the apron still sleeping, and Harry woke the other sleepers and brought Stanley and the girl over. There were almost twenty of them, all together, all barely keeping their eyes open, leaning against each other, many pale and shaking. 

“We need an exit point, Dresden,” I said. “We can’t lead them around like this.”

Then a horse came through the wall.

It was huge and black, the succubus squatted and clinging to its back, its unshod hooves coming down hard on the floor. They landed with a concussive force, like an explosion, but it lasted too long, the blast sustained, sending me reeling back, knocking most of the Nodheads to the ground, but leaving the tables and chairs unaffected. My heart started to pound, my back suddenly soaked with cold sweat. My breathing was quickening, adrenaline flooding my brain, my body, I needed to get out of here but I couldn’t move, my muscles suddenly gone weak, my legs rooted in place--

Harry slammed a hand down on table, bracing against the force, other hand outstretched in front of him. A wall of ice rose up between us and the horse, cutting the blast of force; my panic drained out of me in a second, leaving me shaky and hollow in its wake. 

“What is that,” I managed, getting the gun out, stepping up to stand beside Harry, getting ourselves between the ice and the Nodheads-- still all on the floor, a few confused moans, some soft sounds of distress. Damn. 

“Nightmare,” Harry said, voice tight. “I think.”

“Can we kill it?”

“Iron will work,” he said. “And fire.” His rod lit up again. “Ready?”

I grunted, and the wall of ice disintegrated, flying back and coating the horse and the succubus with a fine spray. The diner wall they had come through was gone, one of the side ones, an ominous darkness stretching out behind them instead of rubble, the vague suggestion of shapes moving within it. At least there was no concern about the rest of the building coming down. The other three walls remained secure, like they just didn’t notice the laws of physics: the one with the entrance, the kitchen across from it, and the one now behind us while we faced the two fae. I really hate the Nevernever. 

“Hold!” Harry shouted, when the succubus reared up on the horse’s back, a cudgel hoisted over his shoulder. “Hold, hold, fucking hold! Let’s talk this out before you do something stupid and get hurt, Hoover!”

Lust washed over me like a wave on the proverbial shore, tugging me along into the undertow. I braced myself, resisting the urge to stride forward and pistol whip the slimey fuck-- and resisted the urge to throw myself at him after, to let him draw me into his long arms. 

“Knight,” the succubus said, that same deep voice. The Nightmare shifted beneath it, steaming breath rising from its long horsey face, each impact of hoof on ground sending little shivers of terror racing down my back. “You enter my domain, you attempt to steal from me, you disrupt my order of business. What satisfaction shall I demand from you in return?” 

The shapes moving in the darkness behind him drew closer, revealing three tall, spindly women, limbs long, joints knobby, everything about them skeletal and stretched. Long, dark hair hung limp and matted about their faces; distended chins and long crooked noses peeked out from the shadows that hid their features. They looked like every Hallowe’en caricature drawing of a witch I’d ever seen. 

“Hags,” Harry said shortly, before I could ask. “Strong. Nasty. Magic users. Found some friends to make you feel strong, huh?” This, to the succubus. “Are we meeting at the bike racks after class?”

Another shape moved in the darkness, behind the hags and the succubus on the Nightmare. Tall. Strong. The edge of a gleaming blade. 

“Wizard Knight,” one of the hags said, her voice just as cackly as any classic Saturday morning cartoon could ever have wished for. “I will fatten you up like a suckling calf, and when you are round and soft as a new born babe, I will carve you for my sisters. I will take your liver and suck the marrow from your bones.”

“I will take your lips,” said another, “and your fine companion’s eyes, when he is worn to a shell and has no need of them.” 

“And I will take your asses, and kick them up between your ears,” Harry said, cutting them off before the third one could get her dibs in. “This isn’t your fight, hags. Step off.” 

“Is this your fight?” the succubus purred. “Are they all your lovers, Knight?” 

“The citizens of my Liege Lord,” I said cheerfully, waving to remind them that I was along for the ride. “Whom I’m authorized to represent in all arenas.” 

The succubus grinned, showing blunt, even teeth. “I dispute the mortal baron’s holdings, and challenge you to prove them. Do you wish to settle it by trial of combat, or of magic?” 

It must have hurt her to forgo the Wagner, but I could do my best to give her an entrance.

“Combat,” I said, nodding to the darkness behind the succubus and Nightmare. “There’s my champion.” 

Sigrun wasn’t doing blue-collar baker or white-collar businesswoman now: she was in full armor, battle-axe over her shoulder as she strode forward to place herself in front of me-- and between me and the succubus.

The succubus looked at Sigrun, calculatingly. 

“What a useful pawn you are, my great man,” he said, looking back to me. “How many do you call lover, so that you can summon them to your defense? Chooser of the slain, you are not first in your mortal’s eye. You must get in line behind the Knight of the Winter Court.” 

Gard looked at Harry. I could almost hear the succubus hold his breath, waiting for them to turn on each other. 

Harry waved at Gard, holding up the pieces of the rune I’d given him at Dick’s, back before the night had even started. “Hey, Sigrun. You got my call?” 

“Even so. You tapped that?” 

He gave her a strange ironic grin. “Verily.” 

“Well done, Knight.” 

The succubus accepted that his ploy had failed with surprising grace; Gard had barely finished speaking before he was hefting his cudgel and swinging it in a sudden, skull-shattering arc. 

Gard parried the succubus, her axe catching the cudgel near the grip and shifting its momentum enough to send it crashing to the floor instead of into her head. She swung back with a quick reverse of her first swing, cutting deep into the succubus’s arm and knocking him from the Nightmare’s back, catching him on the way down with a kick that sent him tumbling into the hags. 

I guess the duel was off and a lawless brawl was on. I took the chance to throw Gard a hand signal-- I’d be running escort for the sleepy Nodheads and would need cover. She nodded sharply and whirled to confront a hag, vaulting over a table with one hand, sending the hag skittering back with a swing of her axe. 

The Nightmare reared and leapt forward, whinnying shrilly, a sound like someone screaming in the dark, like rusted metal and cars colliding. Harry snapped a word, and the horse skidded when its hooves hit the ground, the diner tile coated over with a layer of black ice, and it crashed sideways in a graceless heap, screaming as it smashed into booths and tables, clearing the space between us and the fighters. Wood went flying as it tried to kick its way up to its feet. 

The hags closed quickly on Harry and Gard, snarling threats and yelling about an old debt of blood-- I didn’t know which they meant, whether it was Harry or Sigrun who’d pissed them off, but either way they’d have to stand in a very long line. Sigrun barked something to the wizard, and spears of ice sprang up at seeming random, making the attackers jump out of the way, making it a maze to get Gard and Harry’s positions-- and, hopefully unnoticed, leaving me and the Nodheads a clear, icy corridor to the door. 

I was exhausted, my energy drained-- literally-- but long instinct and experience had my back here. Separate from the sucking void outside and the strange shapes of the enemy, this was very much a standard drug raid, with some hostages thrown in. A clean-up operation. I knew what I was doing; so did Gard. And the wizard... well, he was here to keep things interesting. 

I started to herd the Nodheads out, mostly bodily, spurring them to motion with pushes and determined orders. Some were waking up faster than others, and as soon as I saw comprehension I moved in to stave off panic by giving them a job-- you take him, you take her, buddying them off and sweeping all of us to the door. Standard procedure. Once we were clear, Gard would get out and finish the extraction. Or, in other words, get us the hell back into the real world. 

I didn’t let myself get distracted by the fighting; long, taloned arms flashed in and out of my peripheral vision, gouts of fire and rumbling underfoot spooked the group of Nodheads-- I kept them going towards the diner door, arms wide, feeling like a human snowplow as I urged them on. 

Something grabbed me from behind and my eyes almost rolled back in my head. Pure, weapons-grade sexual bliss flooded me, streaming from the huge hand wrapped around my neck down to my chest, my groin, to the tips of my toes.

I collapsed to my knees as the feeling ebbed, leaving hollow, jagged edged want behind it. The inside of Harry’s duster was wet, sticking to my thigh.

“Much better, little mortal,” said the succubus, and I scrambled to turn around, to face him instead of the few confused Nodheads who’d noticed, clustering around the door. I almost needed to crawl, spinning awkwardly in place, both my arms shaking, not able to manage my feet yet. “You restore my strength. More, little lover?” 

I sucked in a breath, realizing by the way it hurt that his grip on me had bruised my trachea, coughed. He held out a hand to me, the deep cut on his arm from Sigrun closing up, and the compulsion to join with him-- to heal him so that he could go murder my allies-- was like gravity. 

I fumbled into the pocket of the duster and reached for his hand. When the surge of pleasure hit, my body was already moving, and I just let it, pulling myself up and falling into a roundhouse that whipped Harry’s revolver into his temple. 

Marcone didn’t hire me just for my brain and my good looks. I can throw a hell of a punch, and a Smith & Wesson Model 29 brings nearly three extra pounds of wood and iron to the party. The succubus reeled and the brain-frying bliss stopped. It had left me adrenally charged, body tight and close to climax again, and I used all of that when I lifted the fucking thing over my head and threw him bodily back into the fight, bouncing him off of a hag. 

The Nodheads were all awake now, and staring at me-- a shaggy, redheaded madman with an erection tenting his coat-toga. 

“Go,” I said, and they did, spilling out into the not-town streets. 

“Hey,” said Edelson, squinting and tipping his head to make sense of the world. “Is that Dick’s?” 

Once I looked, it did look like the outside of the club, but not. In the Nevernever, the discrete brick building had a Gothic front, relief carvings of beautiful men and women reaching for the sky and each other worked into the architecture. I blinked, and shook my head hard, and remembered-- talking business with Harry, before I got distracted with showing him my etchings. 

“Everybody in the bar,” I said, striding forward and leading the way. The Nodheads didn’t know me, they didn’t trust me: they did trust Dick’s, though, knew it as a place of safety. I was banking on that having some effect.

Inside it was full of mirrors, intact and gleaming. I was looking for it, so I recognized the positioning-- the newly installed ones that Harry had pointed out, in the real Dick’s. He’d been right; something had been watching. But now we could use them as an exit. 

“Everyone in the center of the room!” I barked, and “Stay!” as I headed for the door, revolver in hand. 

The fight had spilled out of the diner, at least part of which was on fire. I could see two of the hags, the succubus, and the Nightmare-- the horsey fae was hanging at the edge of the fight, limping and cautious about where it got a hoof or a bite in.

I needed Gard’s attention, but she was distracted with a pair of hags circling her, and the third was sneaking in on her six-- so I shot the third, and lit the Nevernever up with the sound of revolver fire. Multitasking. 

The .44 round barely scratched the hag, but it gave her just enough pause for Gard’s axe to whistle in and take off her head. Her two colleagues screamed, and Gard plowed through them on the way to me. 

“Dresden!” I yelled, and he caught my eye and waved us quickly into Dick’s again-- at least I think that’s what he did, the motion was disrupted when he had to turn his glowing rod on the succubus.

Gard barreled into the temple-of-hookup, reaching into the pouch under her armor for more of her spelled runes. “We scorch the earth, Raudr,” she said. “All of these people must be ready to move when the Knight joins us.” Something exploded outside. “Meth labs, they are always so messy when they go,” she added, wrinkling her nose. 

I nodded in disapproval, and turned to the crowd of now mostly-coherent Nodheads. 

“All right, people. We’re getting out. Everyone cozy up to a mirror! When I say ‘Go’ you’re going to push against the glass.” 

Some of these people were awake enough to question ‘go through the mirror’, but ‘push against the mirror’ makes more sense to people who live in our world instead of Harry’s. They lined up in ragged, uncertain groups, and I went around to each to prep them, doing a headcount as I did. 

Another Fourth of July explosion outside, and Harry surged through the door with a wall of flame behind him. If he’d been wearing the coat, it would have been one hell of an entrance. 

“She’s going to blow soon,” he said urgently, and flung a _Forzare!_ behind him without looking-- the dark form that had been encroaching over his shoulder was thrown back out of view. “She cannae take much more of this,” he added gamefully, bad Scottish accent in place. We ignored him.

“It will blow hard,” Gard said, revealing her palm full of runes. “You must be ready to close the passage as soon as we are through.” 

“Aye, cap’n,” he said, with a salute. “Okay. Okay-- _Pluri parturum_!” Light shot from the mirror nearest him to the next nearest and the next nearest, ringing the room in silver, the mirrors humming as the portal opened. 

“Go!” I bellowed, and then, because everyone was too busy gaping: “Push the mirrors!” The Nod-runner we’d caught was the first to catch on, and everyone else followed her example, shoving against and falling through the nearest mirror. The last of them vanished just as the Nightmare burst into Dick’s, the two angry hags behind it.

I nodded at Gard; she nodded at me, and I dove for a mirror as she grabbed Harry and pulled him along, crushing the runes in her palm and scattering them on the ground. 

Then I was on a dirty concrete floor, ears ringing from the shift between worlds, full of the murmur of confused voices and Gard’s urgent “ _Close the gates close the gates close the gates._ ” 

The mirror in front of me was an open pit into elsewhere, lit up with white fire, heat blooming toward me-- and then was suddenly a mirror again, showing me my own dazed, shaggy face. I needed clothes. At least my erection was gone. 

“Got’m,” Harry said exhaustedly, and slumped to the floor, gripping his head. “Anyone got an aspirin?” 

I became aware that we were being watched: a bartender, holding a mop; Greg, frozen over the cash-register with a pencil in one hand and a pile of receipts next to him. 

“Hi, folks,” I said. “Ditto the aspirin.”

* * *

We barely, barely talked the staff out of calling the cops, at least for long enough to get half an explanation together and some kind of coherent story. It became clear to everyone pretty quickly that “escaped from a drug facility in the woods and made their way back to town” was going to hold a lot more water than “suddenly came through the mirrors.” 

It took a few hours for stories to be straightened, for the cops to finally be called and arrive, and for Gard, Harry and I to sneak away before we became part of the investigation. Gard radioed the squad a few times, keeping everyone in the loop. My radio hadn’t survived the trip to the Nevernever, dying with a whine when I turned it on. When we snuck out and then around back to the alley, Abassi met us laden with a first aid kit, bottle of aspirin, a change of clothes for each of us, and three takeaway cups of coffee. I took twice the recommended dosage of aspirin and used my coffee to wash it down, then drained the rest of the cup in one long go. Then I took my clothes. You have to have priorities.

There was something else dragging at my brain, something twitchy and unpleasant, and I couldn’t pin it down until I got my pants on and picked up Harry’s duster to give it back to him. Semen flaked off, and I remembered with a brutal start what I’d unconsciously been trying to forget. 

Without rage and adrenaline there was just the knowledge that I had been-- used. Exposed and-- made to do things-- and used. 

“...It needs to be dry cleaned,” I said, trying to uncurl my suddenly-fisted hand so that he could take it back. “Sorry.”

Harry almost met my eyes; his face did this thing like it was trying to fit fifty emotions at once, finally settling on a wanish grimace, reaching out to take his coat. “I’ll make sure to send the scumbag the bill.”

“Then we are decided.” Gard clapped us both on the shoulders, looking more like the type-A businesswoman after an all night takeover bender than a returning Nordic champion now that her armor was gone. “I, for one, need to replenish my strength: come join me for the Breakfast Specials.” She sounded hearty and happy about it, but she was giving me a worried look. 

It was sunrise already; my eyes were gritty, burning, as the shadows lengthened and the sky turned pink and orange and beautiful. I tingled all over, the hair that made up my disguise vanishing away. I turned fully to the sunrise and let the hair strip off as if it would take the succubus’ touch away.

Harry had a stricken look that I was going to have to unpack later, along with all the other breadcrumbs he’d dropped me lately. “I’m sorry. About what happened,” he said.

“Not your fault,” I promised him. Reassuring him was easier than reassuring myself; I could be big about this, for him, in front of him. 

“Touching,” Gard said, not unsympathetically, and curled her hand around one of my biceps. “But come. There are pressing concerns: do I want the egg and cheese scramble, or the bottomless pancakes?” 

 

I went with the pancakes; she went with the scramble, and ate half of my meal on the side. The diner staff might have frowned at our sharing something that was supposed to be ‘bottomless,’ if they hadn’t been obviously trying to work around a missing server. It meant our meals were a little slow in ordering and coming, but didn’t get us any strange looks when Gard and Harry muttered and broke runes over the food, missing server or not, so we took what we could get. It hadn’t been drugged-- wherever the succubus was, he wasn’t wearing a human face and working here anymore-- but I decided to stick to juice and coffee, and give the water a miss this time anyway. 

The less attentive service also gave us privacy to give Gard a full debrief, and at least start some of the negotiations that this was going to take. 

“So you attacked a Wyldfae and put yourself in harm’s way. Arguably as an ally to Marcone,” I said, scribbling on the back of a paper kid’s menu with a borrowed pen. “Which means that your boss is probably going to put the screws to my boss at some point...” 

“Or mine, depending; there are ties of allegiance both ways,” Gard said, cheerfully plowing through one of my syrup-soaked pancakes. “Or the other way around, perhaps: you did summon me to your aid. But there is enough goodwill on all sides, today, that this need not be a detriment.” 

The standard political give and take. I could really do without giving to and taking from gods and faerie queens, but this is my life now and I’ve got to live in it. 

“I have some political leeway,” Harry put in, looking exhausted even as he started on the second plate of stuffed french toast. “She may decide I was acting as a free agent, depending on how bad it looks for her to be involved.” 

“As long as all parties are aware of the situation,” Gard concluded, “we stand a fine chance of not having started a war.” 

“Yay,” Harry said. “I’ll set up wards around the crater, Nevernever side-- if there are any runners who are late getting back, they’re going to find me and not the drug lab. I’ll drop them off in Chicago.” 

“I’ll let you know if we run across any more leads, and if there are any faces to look out for,” I promised. 

“It may take some work getting in contact. I’m going to have to report to the Queen; I’ll be deep in Winter.” 

“And I will have to return to Oslo when the briefing in Chicago is over,” Gard agreed. 

“And I’ll be under a mountain of paperwork,” I predicted. 

“About that,” Harry said, frowned, and picked up the coffee cup that he knew was empty, because it had been the last two times he had picked it up looked at it longingly. “You should take some time out from the whole red tape thing and get checked out. Not mortal medical care, but a shrink, probably, and if the scumbag has any magical healers in the Rolodex...” 

“Eh?” 

“I got a look at you in the Sight when I was clearing up Stanley’s bind. All of these guys are going to need some TLC. You too-- I saw the bite marks. Souls grow back. But it’s not a small thing. You’ll be tired, there’ll probably be some depression... and food won’t help like it should.” He put his coffee cup back down after it failed to suddenly be full. “Just. Take care of yourself. Make sure the people we rescued get help.” 

Those poor bastards. He was right. Knowing what it felt like-- and I’d only gotten the corner of it. No. Don’t think of it, wait until later, someplace safe, talk about it with a professional. Put it away. Don’t cringe in front of the wizard. 

“Will do.” I reached over and clapped his shoulder-- he almost went face-first into his plate. He’d blown a lot of energy in the fight, more than I could really understand. What does it feel like, feeding fire out of your hands-? How close had we come to losing-- stop it. “You take care, too. When your boss lets you, come back by Chicago.” 

“Can’t keep me away,” Harry agreed stuffing a bite of sausage into his mouth. 

He left after his third plate. I paid. A bit more politicking, but the balance was heavily in his favor, and the cost of a breakfast would get me that much closer to being back in the black.

Gard waited until he was gone to pull out my cell phone from her jacket pocket. “Sleep before reports, Raudr,” she said sternly, handing it over once I’d promised. There’s wasn’t much. My inbox was full but not about to collapse under its own weight, mostly low priority. A note from John that we’d meet tomorrow afternoon-- giving us the day off, not that we hadn’t known it was coming. 

And a text, a little more personal, asking me to check in before I signed off. I was touched: John’s about as good at expressing emotions in a straightforward and proportionate manner as a major avalanche at a ski resort is at being discrete. He’d been worried about me.

 _-Dresden just left.-_ , I sent him.  
 _-Checking messages and then signing off for the day.-_  
 _-Cover identity should last until we’re gone.-_ I added, then shot Gard a sheepish look, even though that was nowhere near thorough enough to count as a report.

“How is Marcone?” she asked around a mouthful of toast.

“Good. Trying to reign in his micromanaging impulses. As a favor to us.”

She nodded, and took a piece of my bacon. That wasn’t bottomless-- but when it came to bacon, she’d saved mine tonight, so she could eat all of it she wanted. I almost chuckled and then caught myself. I was way, way overtired if I thought that train of thought had been anything other than cringingly shameful.

My phone buzzed almost immediately.

_-Good-_

Then, a second later:

_-Do you have a surplus of Dresden’s potion-_

I wiped syrup off my fingers before I texted back.

 _-Plenty: probably enough for six months, if used every day. You want me on this longer?-_ The thought made something clench and hurt in my belly. A cramp. I was tired; I’d just eaten more than I should have.

_-Just curious-_

I let him leave it at that, deciding that finishing my last stack of pancakes and draining my juice was a better plan than trying to understand John’s brain when the only sleep I’d had in over 24 hours had been a method for a faerie to try and eat my soul. The juice went sour in my mouth, and I put the glass down. I was better about dealing with ugly memories than this. I’d had to learn these skills. I wasn’t going to fall down about this.

I left enough cash on the table to cover our bill and a generous tip, and then Gard and I started the quiet walk back to Mrs. Crowder’s B&B, casually ignoring the cop cars and general mill of crowd and excitment around Dick’s. Mrs. Crowder herself was in the front parlour-- it took until Gard said brightly: “Doesn’t Jim look different without his beard?” for her startled expression to drain away.

I stood under the shower until the water ran cold, then toweled off on my way to bed. Gard was already out, snoring away on top of the duvet, but had rolled onto her side and left me enough room to get underneath the covers if I wanted to. My phone buzzed again just as I was spooning in behind her, under one layer of sheet and spreading a quilt over us both. 

_-Please bring some of the potion tomorrow. I’m considering growing a beard & want to know how it looks-_

I stared at the screen for a second, and then carefully put the phone back down on the bedside table, willing myself to sleep before John could text again and ask for workout tips. Telling him _I’ve just been sexually assaulted, now is not the time to ask how to score with the wizard_ would make both of us unhappy and he was already going to be stupid with guilt.

* * *

The mountain of paperwork I’d forecasted was snowed in by the great blizzard of John Being Protective; I got rushed through a simple, thorough debrief and then hauled into counseling. The thing all those years ago with the hexenwulven never really left him. And certain things-- they do set him off. He considers some crimes worse than others. I do, too, I admit... but in this case I was too busy trying to scrub it out of my brain to get really appropriately angry. And then I started to get inappropriately angry, losing my grip on my temper, reacting badly, sleeping with the lights on, and never for long enough at a time. 

I took a few weeks off. I worked on my dissertation. I worked with the company psychiatrist to find a combination of sleep aids and anti-anxiety medications that worked for me. It took a while for the after effects to really show up-- as much as I thought I’d had it under control, when waking up with morning wood almost led to a full blown panic attack and a wet dream could screw up my entire day....

I had remembered what Harry’d said, made sure all of the Nod runners and cookers we’d rescued had the same access to care. It was all I could do. They’d all been chewed on more than I had; anything I was going through, they were dealing with that much worse. The psychiatrist liked what I was doing for them and disliked my justifications, my attempts to downplay the wrongs done to me by focusing on the wrongs done to others. If I were honest about it, I understood. But it didn’t stop me from thinking it in desperate circles, especially when I found out John had gone to meet with the Raiths and had taken Nowalski with him instead of me, and had been grateful for it.

Gard hadn’t moved in, but she was at my place two or three nights a week, and I slept a lot better for it. For a touchy couple of weeks, it was almost all the sleep I got. She was amazing-- kind, distracting, full of small gestures that made life easier. She brought me a stainless steel ring, subtle and unornamented enough to wear comfortably while I slept. It helped. Most of all, she didn’t rush me to get off the anti-anxiety pills-- that ‘lack of sexual interest’ side effect had been wonderful. Less so for her, but she had places to go and we were both okay with that. Knowing she was getting hers elsewhere and still wanted to play Xbox and eat takeout with me... that was nice. 

I gave myself six weeks and re-assessed, started to wean off the drugs and use coping mechanisms instead. 

And I make it sound rational and straightforward, but it was all miserable and twisted and I spent a lot of time angry that part of me had been turned into a weapon against the rest of me. That something pleasant and pleasurable had been poisoned and a new experience I really could have embraced, made something special, had gone toxic. I spent random hours at a time furious at the succubus, wanting to scream at him and hurt him-- spent horrible minutes afraid that he was coming back.

I coped. Not always well. Mostly not well. I coped. My friends bore me on sufferance, with love. John tried not to make it all about him and his guilt for letting me be hurt, and he did all right. This was my life now and I lived it. 

Eight weeks after saying goodbye with his mouth full of stuffed french toast, Harry showed up on my doorstep. He had snow piled on his head and shoulders, little drifts like in a cartoon, and held a case of beer out in front of him. “Hey,” he said. “This is for you.”

“Dresden,” I said. “Cold out?”

“It’s December,” he said, shrugged, and sputtered as the snow on his head fell down his face into his eyes and mouth. He brushed the stuff from his shoulders, and held up the beer again. “For you. It’s the good stuff.”

It was; I knew the unassuming label, from McAnally’s. “Neutral beer for a neutral visit?”

He gave me a guarded look. “Look, you told me to visit. Did something political happen when I wasn’t looking?” 

“It is a token of friendship, Nathan. Invite him in,” Gard called from the living room. “I have saved the game. Your diamond vein is safe another day.” 

I forced a smile; he’d caught me off guard, and now I was being a dick. “You heard the lady.” I gestured inside. “Come on in.”

He did, shuffling nervously. He was wearing his duster, jeans, a t-shirt, and worn slip-on deck shoes. In what was, last I checked, already over half a foot of fresh snow. My smile turned real on me before I could catch it. 

“This a bad time?” he asked.

“No, no. Just caught me by surprise.” I made an effort to relax, and I think he saw it, his expression remarkably hesitant for a man who can cause twenty-three insurance agents to spontaneously develop ulcers on the same day. “Figured this was a busy time of year for you.”

“My boss’s better half is Santa Claus,” he agreed. “It’s pretty awesome. But mostly this is party season. As long as nobody declares war, I’m a decorative function. And then it’ll be the Solstice, and time for the After Party to start. Parties. After Parties.”

“Anybody declaring war?”

“Not yet,” he said cheerfully, and handed the beer over to me, hopping around while he pulled off his shoes and duster. “Hoover’s the only one with real grievance to bring, and we haven’t seen a trace of his ugly mug. Mab’s been keeping me close, but I don’t think she’s worried he has any valid standing.”

“Nathan, Wizard,” Gard called. “You are holding the beer. Continue your talk inside.”

“I’ll get some cocoa going,” I said, and after a moment and a sort of awkward dance where I tried to figure out how much body contact we were doing, I steered him towards the living room by the shoulder.

“Wizard!” Gard said happily, and patted at the couch. He folded down, leaving my spot marked between them with the throw Gard and I had been sharing. The wind whistled outside, reminding me why. 

Gard jerked her chin at the beer I was still holding. “Bring Baileys with the cocoa, and I will concede the ale for another day,” she said graciously. 

“Deal,” I said, and flicked the switch for the fireplace on the way to the kitchen. 

“Diamond mine?” Harry asked Gard, and then I listened to a Valkyrie explain the finer points of Minecraft to a wizard while I made us all cocoa. I got back before she could start traumatizing him by telling him about creepers and set the tray of mugs and the bottle of Baileys on the table. 

The fire was roaring away, and I wedged myself between them, brushing up close to both of their thighs. Just being this close to Harry-- even the smell I realized now must be his soap or shampoo-- it brought back memories. Some bad. Some not. 

“I made it,” I said. “Someone else booze it.”

Gard took over, eagerly. She’s the most generous bartender I know, and my mugs are big, so the ratio between the Baileys and hot chocolate ended up heavily in favor of no one being able to feel their face by the time the night was over, if we had more than a few of these. Good thing tomorrow was the weekend, and Gard and I were both planning on taking it.

“Drink,” she said, handing Harry a mug and then me. “Nathan is quite skilled in the kitchen,” she added. 

“It’s just cocoa,” I said, about the same time Harry said:

“Nathan?” like he’d just been let into some sort of secret club.

“True,” Sigrun’s eyes sparkled. “But play your hand right, Dresden, it could be an omelette in the morning.”

Harry snorted into his hot chocolate, and I drew him a little closer, taking a long drink from my own mug. It was a cold night. High, wild winter. The snow whirled outside, the streetlights just enough light to see nothing but swirling white through the windows. It was a good night for this. Company. Warmth. Some other things too, maybe. I felt a little stirring in my groin, a flutter of interest in my belly that was immediately overwhelmed by tension and the threat of nausea.

“How are you doing?” Harry asked, looking awkwardly at my eyebrows.

I shrugged, feeling a little disingenuous. Sighed, and scrubbed the brush of my hair. Sigrun shifted, a little more of her weight leaning against me, her back tucking in against my chest protectively. “All right. Why-- how do I look?”

He pursed his lips, his scar standing out in relief, and then said: “Do you want me to see?” 

I hadn’t quite realized-- or remembered-- what it meant to ask him that question. I thought about it for a second. “Is that something you’re comfortable with?” 

I wasn’t sure what the etiquette here was. The information we had on Wizard’s Sight wasn’t extensive; I’d read what there was, but it was mostly conjecture, interviews with ThreeEye users, bits and pieces from folklore. The most direct information had come from Helen Beckitt, and I wasn’t predisposed to believing anything she’d ever said. Was this a personal thing to ask? Was it a personal thing to request, if he did want to have a look? What exactly would he be seeing about me?

“The Sight,” Harry said, “it’s not like you’re just opening up another eye, not really. It’s more like opening up your brain like a film exposure, letting the light burn the memory in. What you can See-- there’s beautiful things and so many horrible things, and they’re all amped up, two hundred and ten percent. You never forget it. It never fades. It’s as fresh and powerful every second as it was when you Saw it.” 

He paused, and I opened my mouth to apologize, to tell him to forget I ever brought it up. I could feel my cheeks heating up; I hadn’t realized what I was asking--

“I’ve seen a lot of those horrible things,” he continued, before I could break in. He gave a little shudder, involuntary, and I could feel the skin on the back of his neck go cold and clammy through my sweater. “So I try to see other things when I can, too. Stuff to balance it out. I’d like to Look at you again.” He wound down, looking about as embarrassed as I was. 

I was flattered, I’ll admit that. “Okay. Could you take a look, please?” 

He nodded and pulled away from me, my arm falling down to my side, and put his mug down on the coffee table, scrambling up to stand next to the couch. Gard shifted, gave my thigh a squeeze and got up, going around to the other side of the coffee table and out of Harry’s line of sight. 

Harry breathed out, deep and centring, and I could tell when he’d ...what, turned it on? Opened it up? He didn’t do the long blink thing like last time, but his eyes narrowed, his gaze suddenly intense, fixated on me. 

His face softened, got curious, like he was looking at a painting-- then he smiled, just a little upturn at the corner of his lips, and he looked me up and down, eyes lingering on something obviously a lot more interesting than jeans, slippers, sweater. Once or twice he frowned, an expression as small as the smile. 

Then he blinked and it was over. I could see him coming back to reality, startled by the difference between the aforesaid jeans-slippers-sweater and whatever he’d been looking at. 

“You’re healing up good,” he said quietly. “You’ve got more to go. There are some scars. You make them look good.” 

“Always so,” Gard agreed, walking back around the table and dropping down next to me. 

“Have you Looked?” he asked her. 

“Oh, of course.” She’d done one of the early exams on me-- I was less surprised that she’d indulged in a little supernatural reading. I’d have to ask her about it, later.

“Do you see the--” he made a few quick motions that could have been any flowing piece of clothing, and then another one that could be any reasonably long, slender, flexible object-- longer and flatter than a penis, to dispel the obvious interpretation. 

“I think not. We have different symbols, you and I, Harry.” She patted my chest, and then reached up to pull him back down to the couch, sitting next to her this time.

“Uh,” I said, feeling like a third wheel, or a show dog. “Dresden. Not that I can x-ray glasses you, but are _you_ okay?” 

He scoffed, and then went quiet, a little brooding. I knew from brood, with my employer. I reached a foot over and bumped his ankle. “Dresden?” 

“Eh. I’ve been through this before.” He said it dismissively, and it was awful to hear. “I’m more worried about-- me, now.” 

“Huh?” 

“My reactions. The Knight thing. The last guy thought that absolute corruption was a job perq. I don’t want to be Lloyd Slate.” He shivered against Gard. “I really don’t. Especially not at the end.” 

“You seem like you’re doing good,” I offered. Gard nodded. 

“Just trying to keep a lid on my temper. I told Hoover if he laid a hand on me, I’d take it off. And he used you like a chew toy.” 

“So you want to take his arm,” Gard said sympathetically. “But you know it is safer to simply kill him and this is frustrating, yes.” 

“No!” Harry gaped at her and shook his head. “I mean-- I’m not a hand-taking guy. I need to not be that guy. It’s not frustration. It’s being afraid. Of myself.” 

I reached behind Sigrun and squeezed his shoulder firmly, almost-meeting his gaze. 

“It’s okay, Harry. Moral compromise isn’t always a sign of magical interference. Or John would be the Merlin of the White Council by now.” 

Harry’s involuntary laughter sounded painful, like a cough. Gard pulled him against her and made a soft, comforting sound. 

“Anything we can do, beanpole?” I forced levity.

“Remind me that I’m good for something besides hired killing for a faerie queen?” he said sardonically, and then looked surprised. “--wait. Yeah.” 

“Yeah?” I prompted. 

“I can’t even find Hoover, and I’m not going to torture him for kicks. But I can focus on something productive,” he said, explaining it out for himself. “I can heal. Not much. But I can help _you_. Buff you up so that you heal faster.” 

“Would it stop the nightmares?” I hadn’t meant to say that. Harry and Gard gave me matching worried looks. I heard her murmur ‘oh, Raudr’. 

“It... might. It’ll definitely make sure nothing gets _in_.” 

“...that’d be great,” I admitted, not sure I was going to be able to, surprised at how easily it came out. “What do you need?” 

“Nothing. You. On the couch. Uh,” he said, and went a little red.

“Well of course,” Gard said helpfully. “But what about the healing?” I elbowed her. 

He wiggled out of her grip and waved her to the side, handing me the cocoa. “Drink this.” 

“Chocolate is magic? Rowling got that right?” 

“No. It’ll just help you relax. I can use--” he waved at the cocoa, the blanket, the heating vent, the bottle of Baileys. “This energy. It’s yours; I’m just filtering it back in.” 

I took a big swig and put the cocoa down, blinking. I was definitely losing some feeling in the face region. “Hit me.” 

He reached out, and I told myself that I couldn’t sense magic and that I needed to stop imagining the soft hum. His big hand flattened over the top of my head, and I felt... 

It was like a soft rush of air, clean, smelling faintly of fabric softener and cocoa, filtering through my brain. It was just this side of unpleasant and then Harry said “Sorry!” and it dimmed down to just this peaceful glow that made thinking easy. 

I sagged against the back of the couch and he brought his hand down to my forehead. The energy flow moved; it was like having my psychic sinuses suddenly cleaned out. I could breathe again. His hand travelled down my body-- the throat, touching carefully, my chest, my solar plexus.

“I can’t hit the-- bite marks directly. I’d make things worse,” he said apologetically, and I mumbled something at him but was largely distracted by feeling like I was having a good night’s sleep only with enough cognizance to appreciate it. 

He slipped his hand behind my back and cupped the base of my spine, dragged his hands down my hips and my legs to my feet, ran them back up my body, out along my arms, the delicate skin of my wrists, and gripped my hands. 

I felt embraced. Wrapped in the evening, the security of my house, the warmth despite the winter. Like I’d woken up from a half-dream. Better than I had since the fucker took a bite out of me in the first place. _Safe._

And despite Harry avoiding my groin, I had an erection that could stand in for the Sears Tower. 

“Ah,” Gard said, and I could hear her smile, pleased, gently teasing. She slid close and pulled me against her chest, arms wrapping around mine, stroking just a little down my pecs. It felt good. “I see we are now a party of four.”

“Heh,” I said, a little more amused than the comment warranted, my head still as light and bubbly as a glass of champagne. I reached for a pillow to hold in my lap, after a second too long of muzzy processing. My jeans were way too tight. “Sorry,” I said to Harry. 

“No, it’s okay,” he said, really obviously trying not to look at my groin. “I didn’t realize that would happen. I would have warned you. Sorry. How do you feel?” that last said with such a desperate attempt at normalcy that I couldn’t help but laugh, reach out to him and try to tug him down. 

“I could kiss you,” I said. “Now I know why it’s a cliche.” 

His face went red, and Gard apparently decided we needed a little shove, because she reached out and pulled him bodily down on top of us, settling him in our laps. He knocked my cushion askew. I didn’t really mind. I would have expected it to be too much, the heady rush of relief, of good will, catalysed by someone else, to send me right back into a tailspin to the last time I’d had a good mood forced into me. But it wasn’t. Maybe the giddiness was enough to chase it away. I felt good. 

I felt more than good. I felt horny. 

An honest to god surge of want and sex that was all mine and didn’t turn itself into nausea and anger as soon as I noticed it. 

“Wizard,” Gard chided. “Are you going to leave him wanting?”

“Uh?” Harry said, trying to wiggle his hips away from my erection. 

“Christ, Dresden,” I said, resting my hands on his hips, stilling the way he was apparently trying to dig his ass into my thigh. “Do you sharpen those bones?” I left my hands where they were, lightly touching, and he eyed me and I eyed him back, and then he slumped against me, the uncomfortable stiffness leaving his body.

His body. Not mine. His eyes sparkled. “So, I would definitely say you’re feeling better. That’s my professional opinion, even.”

“Good call,” I told him, and leaned forward to kiss his neck. 

“Uh-- just so we’re clear-- oooh.” He wiggled. “You don’t think you have to? You’re ready to do this?” 

“Yeah,” I said, honest, feeling almost weightless with it. “Yeah, I really want this. Do you? Sigrun?”

I looked back over my shoulder, checking, and she pinched one of my nipples through my sweater, kissed behind my ear. “Much so.”

Harry looked back and forth between us quickly, his future as a poker star dashed again by the way he was visibly processing, debating, and deciding. His smile was a little wild at the edges, a bit reckless, and he leaned down to kiss me with it.

Gard made a pleased sound, plastering herself against my back and kissing my neck. “Raudr. I mean to molest you. So watch yourself and do not strain the old wounds.” 

She was telling me to be careful, I knew it, and she was right-- but feeling so healthy again after so much strain, I wanted to do everything, right away, right now. 

“All right. All right. Trial run,” I said, my dick telling me that we didn’t need a test run and we were good to go. I made myself think of my last panic attack-- it seemed distant, behind brick walls, but the memory helped me calm down a little. 

Harry snorted, looking down at me with that lopsided smile that seemed to show up when nobody was trying to kill him. “Do you two ever turn off?” 

“Never,” I told him. “Can you actually show a little patience?” 

He made a huffy offended sound; I kissed him again, slower and more deliberately. He seemed uncertain for a second, and then melted into it. Sigrun snickered at us and patted me on the shoulder, saying something about making ready. 

Harry wrapped his long, long arms around me to make up for her absence and cupped my head with one hand, deepening the kiss. I tried to think; it wasn’t easy, but I managed. I reached down, grabbed Harry’s free hand, and dragged it up my body-- as I pressed his hand against my throat, he pulled back with a pop. 

“What?” he asked. 

“Just-- touch there.” I looked for understanding. “Places that might-- you know?” 

“Oh.” He paused. “You’re sure-?” 

“I want to know now. Not when we’re in bed.” 

He applied maybe an ounce of pressure around my neck and backed off. 

“Dresden.”

He looked a little sick, but his hands tightened around my throat again, maybe two ounces this time, but he held it, staring at my face until I nodded, and then sprang back like my skin had been on fire.

“Okay?” he asked, a little desperately.

“Okay,” I agreed. “Tell me I’m pretty.”

“And witty and gay?” he asked, smirking. Back on even ground when he was making bad jokes, check. 

“Just pretty. And big. And that you want to eat me.”

His expression tried to tie itself in a knot-- part excited, part horrified, part guilty. “Stars and stones, Hendricks.” The guilty part won out. “But you really are, and I really, really do,” he added, brokenly.

“So tell me about it, Dresden. Come on. You want me that bad? Why.”

“God, Hendricks. Because you’re gorgeous. You’re so big. You’ve always been so big, you’ve got to be three times as wide as me, and you’re so strong. I love your muscles. I’ve always loved your muscles, even when all I could think of you as was Marcone’s bulldog, before I knew you were a smart, decent guy. I love your chest. Your pecs are bigger than my head. I would suck on them all day if I could.” His face was bright red, his words getting babbly. I could see him clenching his hands into fists, keeping himself going.

“You’re this big red statue in any crowd, and you’re so hot. I love your hair. I love how you look when you have it everywhere. I love your cock.” He squeezed his eyes shut, mouth thinning out in a white line, and seemed to reach some decision. “You’re so beautiful when I Look at you. Properly Look. You’re like a Roman statue, but you’re real and alive and glowing with how strong you are. You’re an academic and a peacemaker and I want to swallow your cock whole. I want to eat you up. I want to suck your tits and your dick and stick my tongue in your ass, I want to make you scream and shake and tell me to keep going, I want to know how you taste everywhere and I’d crawl inside you if I could--”

I cut him off, falling back on the cliche, kissing him into silence, my heart racing, my palms sweaty. He moaned into my mouth and went boneless against me, pressing up into my body, his hands finding my pecs through my sweater and rubbing.

“Well said, Dresden,” Gard said, making him jump. She was naked, her hair down from its usual bun and spread in a mane about her head, and my eyes went right for her thighs, like always. “I have found us supplies; unplugged Nathan’s electronics. Shall we retired to bed?”

My head was spinning when I pulled away from Harry’s mouth, and I stared dumbly at her for a second, brain trying to put together what she said with what my body was screaming at me for. 

I was thinking too much-- I could feel the thoughts whirling at the edges of my lust, urging me to look at how I was reacting, to catalogue what I wanted, what was safest, why did I want, who did I want, what did it say about me, how was I excusing myself...

I wasn’t panicking, I wasn’t terrified of Harry’s desire or his big hands around my neck, I was ready; I wanted this. I knew that. That’s all I’d needed to find out. 

“Yeah,” I said, and stood, scooping Harry into a princess carry for long enough to get him on his feet. He made that cooing sound, and Gard and I gave him the benefit of pretending not to notice. 

“But. Let me do something.”

I pushed past them, striding into my room, stripping as I went and going for the nightstand beside my bed. Gard had lit some candles when she was getting ready, and it gave me enough light to see by as I dropped down to my knees, naked, pulling open the bottommost drawer. The potion bottles were where I’d left them, still tucked away in their multi-bag packaging from the trip to Paton. I dug out the mostly full bottle I’d used for being Jim-- Harry really had brewed me a lifetime supply of this stuff-- and the box of latex gloves. I took a deep breath, and stood up, holding the bottle out to Sigrun and Harry. 

“I’d like to use this,” I said. “If that’s okay.”

And I did. I really did. Using this potion, being Jim-- it had been something new, something fun I’d just been getting my teeth into before the succubus had soured it, rotted it out of me. I wanted it again. To be that big red bear of a man who wasn’t tangled up in his own thoughts, was just happy, was experiencing.

He wouldn’t over-analyze. He would just be grateful and aroused to have Harry’s open, honest appreciation for my body, his offered friendship. And I would have Sigrun with us, knowing she had my back, knowing she wanted me however I was, would enjoy me and Jim and whatever games we would play. 

She smiled wickedly at me. “Quite. Wizard?”

Harry swallowed, tongue flicking out to lick his lips. I knew that big eyed, dazed face. “If you’re sure,” he said, clearing his throat. It didn’t help much. I offered him the box of gloves, and he hit his knees in front of me, pulling them on.

 _Jim’s first. His lean, wild cowboy stranger. On his knees in front of him with that look in his eyes._ That did something for me-- my dick jerked, hit my belly, it was suddenly standing up so straight, smearing a little bead of precome against my skin. 

Gard made an appreciative sound, moving behind Harry and sitting on the bed beside us for a better view, stroking her foot up Harry’s ass, down the back of his legs. “You have had him like this when I have not, Dresden,” she said. “Show me how you like him.” 

_Sizing him up like a piece of meat, like a prize bull. Because he was just so goddamn gorgeous._ I told myself to let go, pulled the tether of my thoughts free and let it loose. 

Harry fumbled with the gloves and the bottle for a moment, but managed to get the gloves on and the bottle open, a few drops in his palm. He handed the bottle to Gard, who was watching with open fascination when he smeared his hands up my legs. He lingered longer this time than he had in the hotel room, following the shape of my calves, gripping tight to my thighs. 

He and Gard shared a look when he got to my ass, and he spent his time there, groping and focused. He spread my cheeks wide, leaning in to nose at my cock, long hot breaths, his lips trailing along it-- I grunted, surprised, and then again, jerking when Gard’s wet finger slipped between the cheeks Harry was holding open for her, tracing and teasing. 

I had a moment where I couldn’t figure out what was on her hand-- she wasn’t trying to grow hair in _there_ was she-- then saw the tube of lube beside her on the bed and relaxed back, pushing against her. _Jim would think it was filthy. And the hottest thing he’d ever had._ I moaned a little. 

Harry made a strangled sound, eyes wide, tipped sideways a bit so he could get a peek at what Gard was doing. 

“Head in the game, Dresden,” I grunted, and he jerked straight again, held out his hand to Gard for the bottle of potion. He reapplied and then slid his hands up my back, around to my stomach, and stood to get at my chest, palming and squeezing my pecs. He was breathing hard, rubbing his hands through my hair, then cupping my jaw, gloves slick against my chin, above my lips. _Would he ask Jim to suck his cock? Did he want rugburn on his lean thighs?_

He stepped back, waited a moment, and I started to tingle, that strange skin-crawling sensation of hair growing, thickening, spreading. Gard pressed her finger inside me, one slick, obscene movement, all the way, jerking my mind away from the sensation of the hair growth and onto a much nicer one, burn and shock and a little bit of stretch. I shuddered, nearly came then and there, Harry’s hot eyes on me, Gard doing what she wanted with my body--

“Very pretty,” Gard said, approvingly, standing, pulling out her finger and peeling off the glove, pressing a quick kiss to my mouth. I could feel her smile as she felt the beard, rubbed her cheek against it. “You’ve grown your winter coat.” She ran her hand up along my stomach, fingernails scratching through the thick treasure trail Harry and traced on to me. “You do good work, wizard.”

“Thanks. Didn’t even give you a beard by accident,” Harry said, a little thick-tongued, leaning forward to rub his face between my pecs.

Gard stepped away, holding up the little potion bottle, a look in her eye that was entirely too speculative.

“Uh,” I said.

“It would not be so bad, do you think?” she asked, and Harry stopped, peering over at her. “I believe I would look quite handsome with a beard.”

“Uh,” Harry said.

“This tonic of yours, it is not made just for Nathan? It works on everyone, affects the hair follicles, correct?” 

“Is she serious?” he asked me in an undertone.

“Probably,” I said, normal volume.

“Will you put it on me?” she asked Harry, holding out the bottle. “You did a fine job on our Nathan. Or should I do it myself?”

“I don’t-- I mean-- where?” he asked.

She grinned. “Like Nathan. I too would be a great man. Give me a blond beard and I will play ‘the son of Odin and her hammer’ with you, wizard.” 

“She is kidding, now. She left her strap-on at home.” 

“Oh,” Harry said weakly. “Okay, then. The hammer is her strap-on.” He held out one still-gloved palm, and Gard dripped a few drops of the potion into it. Harry blinked at me one more time, and again at her, and at her encouraging smile, and dropped to his knees and ran his hands up her legs. 

His big hands were set off by her thigh muscles. Christ, she has incredible thighs. He touched her reverently and carefully, which I felt only appropriate-- he laid his head on her belly as he reached around to make sure her ass was covered, and he looked worshipful. Damn if it didn’t look just as pretty when he was doing it to someone else as it felt to have him do it to me. 

Harry kept his dazed expression the whole time, although I think that had a lot more to do with Gard’s incredible body than the potion he was applying. He got a fresh coat when he reached her chest, and she tucked his hands tights to her breasts, guiding them over her body, leaving slick streaks of potion behind, rubbing firmly at her sternum.

Then he traced her jaw, above her lips-- she gripped his wrist when he tried to pull back. “More,” she said, with gentle, unforgiving steel that had Harry holding out his hands for another dose of potion without thought. “If I am to woo my men, I must look my finest, must I not?”

Another few layers of the potion and she deemed it suitable, releasing Harry to step back. He peeled away his gloves, tossing them into the garbage, and bit his lip. I held my breath, and we watched as her hair grew in. It was just as odd looking happening to someone else-- my skin gave a few involuntary twitches in sympathy, but Gard grinned fiercely at it, peering down to watch the thatch spread above her breasts. 

“Well done, wizard,” she told him, bringing up a hand to rub at her new beard, feeling along it with her fingers. It was dark gold and a few inches long, not quite touching her chest, much longer than my neat red comb. She tugged at it experimentally before holding out her arms, displaying herself with a teasing twitch of her lips, turning her head this way and that. “And how do I look?”

Different. She looked different. There was something really jarring about it, but something intriguing and touchable-- the chest hair spreading across her breasts, centering especially above and between them, the flowing beard, the treasure trail that lead down to her groin. Undeniably feminine. Implicitly masculine. Every inch the gorgeous Valkyrie I’d started falling for almost as soon as I met her, with overtones now of the random schmucks she’d dragged from the battlefield-- the type of guys Jim would have dreamt about, and the woman I did. I'd never really understood what Harry loved about Jim's fur, and some of those other guys at Dick's-- what Jim had liked about them too, really, because I hadn't had the time or inclination to stop and pick that lint fully out of my navel-- but it was fun and an easy way to play along and make it something I could cordon off the edges to when I was ready to think about it... but I was starting to get it. Just now, I was really staring to get it.

“Gorgeous,” Harry said, more frankly. Faerie wasn’t vanilla. I was only just starting to appreciate what that meant for him, what he must have experienced. 

“Like a lion,” I said, mouth pulling up. She did. She had a big flowing mane and both I and Jim were a little confused and both of us wanted to touch it. 

“Ah, pfft. We cannot all be bears.” She held out her arms to me and it was as easy as ever to move into her grip and kiss her. And then Harry was touching my arm and then her arms, and I kissed him, savoring the difference-- his stubble, her full beard. I don’t know if it was Jim or me, but suddenly I wanted them both as fiercely as I’d ever wanted anything, anyone, and cupped my hands around their asses, trying to pull each closer to me, and kissed them hard, one after another, trying for both, losing track of whose mouth was whose for a moment. 

Gard dug her chin into my neck, scrubbed, and I broke out in goosebumps, chasing after Harry’s mouth. If it had felt anything like this for him, that first kiss in the bar, I was significantly more impressed that he had made it all the way back to the B&B with me before knocking us into bed.

Well, to be fair, I’d knocked us into bed. And it seemed like a good idea, so I did it again, breaking away to make sure I was leading us in the right direction and steering us back until we hit my big mattress, pushing us over into a sprawl of limbs and mouths. Gard and Harry found each other first, Gard rolled on her side, kissing happily, her expression hidden by her beard, her hand clenched in Harry’s t-shirt. Speaking of--

“Why the hell do you still have clothes on, Dresden?”

“Mluh?” he said, pulling away from the trail he was kissing down Gard’s chest to blink at me where I was tucked up against Gard’s back, kissing at her side, scraping my beard along her ribs to make her quiver. I slung a leg over her hips, pushing at one of Harry’s socks with my toes. 

“Clothes. Lose them.”

He stared at me, uncomprehending, until Sigrun pinched him through his shirt. “Strip, Dresden.” Her stricter tone got through to him, and he flailed around until he’d rolled off the bed, wriggling out of his jeans. 

I tugged at Gard and she obliged, rolling toward me, my mouth closing down on one of her nipples, my face half smushed between her breasts. She arched up, making a deep, pleased sound, and it took me a minute to remember that the hair against my face wasn’t all my beard, wasn’t her hair spilling down over her shoulders. 

It felt really, really good. I rubbed my face in it, opened my mouth wide and sucked and licked at the hair curled and scattered around her nipples, across her chest. She rolled onto her back, dragging me with her to give me more room-- so strong, but I was used to that. It did things for me though, it always did; my hips ground down, hitched up, rubbing against her thighs where I knelt over her. 

Her breasts were familiar to my lips, my tongue, my face. This was Gard, and I cared for her deeply, was in awe of her, knew her body with almost a decade of experience. But the hair-- that was new. That was new, but this was still Gard. The hair touched that thing I’d opened up, this big hot reaction to men I was calling Jim. I liked the way it chafed and tickled against me, caught our sweat, loved the pull of her beard catching against the top of my head and my hair when she looked down. But this was Gard, and I loved her. My mind started to spin, and I strained up, kissing her hard through the beard, rumbling at the brush and burn of it rubbing across my own, which wasn’t usually mine, because this wasn’t usually me-- 

And then Harry’s hands came down on my asscheeks and his mouth came down between them and I lost any trace of thought I had left. “Jesus Christ,” I said, and then curled up, arching my back, sticking my butt up higher, and buried my face in Gard’s tits while she laughed and Harry cooed and stuck his tongue up my ass.

This was something Jim and I had in common. God I loved this. Which I told Harry through judicious mangling of the English language and sounding a bit like a garbage truck coming down the street at six in the morning. Gard likes it when I get rumbly, and she slid a hand down between us and grabbed my dick, jerking me off firmly, praising and encouraging, rubbing her beard against my ears, my neck, until I lost track of anything but how good Harry’s mouth and Gard’s beard and hand and words were making me feel, and I came with a surprised shout.

Harry kept at it, licking me through orgasm and the aftershocks until my arms gave out. Gard caught me, steering me over onto my back, leaving wet handprints all over one of my biceps and my lips stinging and my head spinning after a long, breath-stealing kiss. Even if I’d had the brainpower I couldn’t have really complained-- I’d left wet all over her before she’d left it on me.

“Nm, Dresden. Come here,” Gard said, pushing him back so his head was resting on my stomach, grabbing his cock around the base and swallowing it down until her lips hit her hand and her beard scraped his thighs.

Harry did a pretty good impression of a professional yodeller, babbling and twisting around on me until I grumbled and brought an arm down to pin him still. He probably could have shaken me off without trying if he’d wanted to, but he seemed to like it, bringing his hands up and clutching at my arm like I was the safety bar and he was on a rollercoaster. I listened to Gard suck him off, my eyes closed and brain drifting, filling in what I was missing, imagining the chafing and the beard burn coming up on Harry’s thighs, until he whined, suddenly disappointed, and I cracked an eyelid to see her pulled off him, his dick hard and red and wanting, and splayed back against the pillows.

“Finish on me, Dresden,” she told him, her hand going down between her legs, long fingers and the sound of it wet and distracting. “All over this new fur you have given me, make me sticky and matted until morning.”

“Oh God,” Harry said, and I was impressed he managed to get upright and aim before he came, messy streaks that got all over her chest hair and facial hair and treasure trail, and she rubbed it all in one-handed until she arched up, knees slamming together, and groaned, bone-deep and satisfied. I let go of staying awake to the sound of her working herself to climax again, rolling until my head came down on her breasts, and slept. 

 

I woke up later-- later than I’d expected to. My body was heavy, warm, especially my side. Body. Bodies. Warm, and breathing, and making my muscles complain because I hadn’t been able to do a full-bed sprawl. But that kind of stiffness in the morning only had good connotations for me anymore. 

I had that good, ridden-hard-put-away-wet feeling, minus the objectionable put-away-wet part. And I hadn’t dreamed. 

The sex had been amazing, but a night’s sleep, dreamless and content... was better. It meant I was going to be better. 

It was Dresden who’d woken me up-- trying to squeeze his way out from between Gard and I, wriggling like a bony fish. We’d shifted, sometime in our sleep, and I was on my back, Gard burrowed into my side, wrapped up like a burrito in the majority of the duvet, Harry draped almost diagonally under her and over my chest, the topsheet and a quilt shared between us. Harry’s hand landed square on my face as he braced himself, trying to pull his leg out from under Gard, and I grunted, sputtering blearily up at him.

“Shit,” he whispered. “Sorry, sorry. Was trying not to wake you.”

Gard gave a snort, but it evened out into regular breathing, and I knew from experience that only a crisis, her phone going off, or a complex series of alarm clocks would drag her fully awake. 

“One out of two isn’t bad,” I grunted, and rolled over to face Gard, giving Harry a bit more room to maneuver.

“Thanks,” he said, voice still pitched low, falling gracelessly over me onto the floor and hopping around on one leg, trying to punch feeling back into the other. “Gotta pee. Go back to sleep.”

It wasn’t until he’d hopped his way over to the ensuite that I registered that the candles were all out, and the room was light enough to see by. I rolled over to how I’d been, on my back, the bed warm and dented where I’d been sleeping: I’d been out a lot longer than I’d realized. I wedged myself up, staring at the clean morning-blue light coming through the window, then at the blank face of my alarm clock, the display dead, as if I’d see numbers

Gard’s face loomed half in my view, peaceful with sleep, her beard braided. Obviously I’d missed some sleepover time while I was unconscious. I reached a hand out and brushed the braids-- they were complex, and the beard itself remarkably soft-- then scrubbed at my own beard. I shot a look over at the window, where the light was getting paler, brighter, and rolled out of bed myself, pulling the top sheet along after me.

I have a good view from my condo, out over the lake and just far enough from the Loop to see the shape of the skyline. The snow last night had fallen hard and thick, had already been driven into a grey slush on the roads, but was still white and picturesque on the tops of buildings and frozen on tree branches and iced over out on the lake. The sun glinted cotton candy pink and pale over the ice, the snow, and came up so bright my eyes watered. I turned, watched as the fingers of light crept through the room, brushing over me, making me shiver and my skin crawl as the extra hair disappeared, and up to the bed where Gard growled and pulled a face, rolling away from the sun as her beard melted away.

I could hear Harry moving about the bathroom-- the toilet flushing, the sink running. Comfortable sounds. Part of life. Relaxing, in their way. I breathed out, and when he slipped out, taking a few tiptoeing steps back to the bed before he realized I wasn’t in it, I was as calm as I’d been in a while. A full night’s sleep will do wonders for you, when it’s deep and dreamless. 

“Your braids are gone,” I said, softly, jerking my chin back at Gard. “All your hard work.” 

Harry snorted, reached to trail his damp fingers down my jaw. “Grow yours longer next time, and I’ll do it too. And your hair. Make you look like Pippi Longstocking.” He pressed his lips to my collarbone, and interrupted himself by yawning. “You have the freckles for it, already.”

I rolled my eyes. “Enough with the redhead jokes, beanpole. How late did you two stay up, anyway?”

He paused, and I watched guilt flash across his expression and then wither in the face of me genuinely being okay if he and Gard had had some mano-a-mano. “A while, actually. I can’t believe you didn’t wake up. She’s kind of loud.” 

“So are you,” I said, because only with perfect honesty, or however that Bill Hicks line went. “But I haven’t had a really good night’s sleep in a while.” 

He lifted his chin at me, a rueful little nod of understanding.

Something behind my ribs twinged-- a remembered pain. Sympathy pangs. I wasn’t going to ask; I wish I didn’t know, and I wished he didn’t get it. 

We were saved from that conversation by Gard, who thumped a hand down on the mattress and grunted something from the bed, possibly slurred Norwegian, possibly just slurred.

We glanced over at her, and back at each other, sharing a vaguely guilty look. “Shh,” Harry told me, pressing a finger to his lips. 

I glared at him, and he blinked back guilelessly. It wasn’t very convincing, and I know from mock-innocence, with my employer. 

“Gng. Men.” Gard glared at us, the force of it only somewhat lessened by the glaze over her eyes. “Return and sleep. Or go.”

I went with go, and Harry followed after a moment of indecision, tiptoeing over to the foot of the bed to fetch his clothing from where he’d abandoned it last night while I went to my dresser, pulling out a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt. He opted for his boxers but not his jeans, and I held a second sweatshirt up, offering it, and he nodded, tossing his t-shirt back to the floor.

“Stars, Hendricks,” he said, pulling my sweatshirt over his head once we were out of the bedroom and Gard could snore into the pillows again in peace. “Are you trying to smother me?” He was swimming in it. It looked absurd, like someone had set up a tent around him, but it was the smallest one I had, well-worn and leftover from my undergrad days. 

The kitchen clock was still working, ticking away up on the wall. Going on seven thirty. I really had slept through the night. I went for the espresso machine out of habit-- stopped, eyed Harry, who was leaning against the fridge with his eyes closed, arms tucked close to his body, looking rather like he was regretting voting against Gard’s option of crawling back into bed, and pulled out the kettle and the French press instead.

Dresden opened his eyes when the coffee started to smell like coffee, head jerking up, and he blinked off the doze. I pretended like he hadn’t snuffled a little, and he pretended like he hadn’t been perfectly happy to pass out in my kitchen. 

“Cream’s in the fridge,” I said, handing him a mug. And then: “...Behind you,” when he glanced around, vaguely, clutching at his coffee like a child to his mother’s hand. 

He used up most of my sugar bowl and half of the coffee pot, draining his first coffee before I’d even poured mine, and took his second over to the table where he draped bonelessly into a chair and did his best to crawl inside the cup. I left him to it, going to fetch the mugs from the night before, retrieving my cell phone from the coffee table, checking my texts and inbox. 

The coffee must have done the trick though, because by the time I was back, my cup still half full, pouring the cold remains of last night’s hot chocolate down the sink and tucking the mugs away in the dishwasher, Harry had his feet up on the chair across from him, his cup casually in one hand, and was peering down at the lettering on the front of my sweatshirt. “You went to college in New York?”

I grunted. It meant yes. He’s apparently fluent in grunt though, because he affected a bad Brooklyn accent, doing this thing with his shoulders that I think was supposed to make him look hulking but mostly made him look even more like a scarecrow. “I didn’t know they gave degrees in Enforcing. Majored in Loom? Minored in Knuckle-cracking.” 

I snorted. “Like you got Honors in Asshole, with a concentration in Applied Adolescent Reactions?”

He bucked a shrug, and I could tell I’d hurt him. Shit. We were friends now, or something-- he’d shifted my label back in October, and maybe I’d done the same, but I didn’t know all his buttons, which ones I could tease, which ones to avoid. “Wizarding’s more an apprenticeship thing. Literally, in fact.”

I tried to imagine him a star-spangled hat. “Like Mickey? You ever flood your master’s tower?”

“Never struck me as a Fantasia guy,” he said, eyeing me consideringly. I offered him the rest of the coffee pot and sat down, pulling the chair across from him out, knocking his feet to the ground. “No. ...Did burn down my teacher’s barn once though,” he admitted, after a pause, pouring the rest of the pot into his cup.

I tried not to laugh, and he could see it, gave a rueful face and kicked lightly at my ankle. “So what did you study?” There was honest curiosity there, and the guy really was surprisingly likeable, when he wasn’t being too much of an asshole to stand. 

“BA's in Classics,” I said, sipping at my mug. “Did that there--” a nod to the sweatshirt. "Started my Masters at NYU too, but transferred to Chicago and finished here.” Because an old friend had taken control of a city, and needed my help. But I didn't say that part.

“Better city,” Harry said, a little teasing, a lot proud, and I could see him reevaluating me, briefly, before letting it go. I shrugged, and we settled into an easy silence, Harry content to half doze, half drink at the table, and eventually I got up and started getting stuff ready for an omelette or three. 

I felt good. Not as amazing as I had last night, after he’d first done... whatever he’d done. Healing. Laying of the hands. Energy transference. Not concepts I’d ever been overly trusting of... even after an up-close introduction to magic being real. I’d researched into them, of course, looked for the core of the lessons, and had learned the general lay of the land. He’d done something with the energy centers of my body, I’d been able to tell that much. 

He hadn’t mended all the damage. Nothing but me and a lot of care and time and resources was going to do that. But still... I felt good. Solid and hopeful in a way I hadn’t in a while. Good in my soul, not just my head. I tried not to let it feel too easy, like I’d just been moping, making pretend something had been wrong, because I wasn’t healed, no matter how good I felt right now. But I was better. Was getting better. There was always room for improvement, and my friends were happy to help me. Some just had different ways of doing so than others. 

I paused in chopping up my mushrooms, putting down the knife. “That thing you did, with the chakras. Can anyone do that? For the others?” 

He flicked out of his coffee reverie. “No. You can’t do it for a stranger. And they’re a lot... worse... it’d be--” He stood, agitated.

“It’s okay,” I soothed him. “Sorry I asked. You saved my ass anyway. It’s all right.” 

“I’m sorry,” he said, shoulders slumping. 

“Nah.” I moved behind him-- when he didn’t flinch, I wrapped my arms around his waist, laid my head against his back. “You did good. You’re more than a Winter hitman, Dresden. More than an asshole with no inside voice and a big stick.” 

He turned against me, tangling his long arms around my neck. “I bet you say that to all the morally compromised boys.” His flippancy probably sounded real in his own ears, but he was leaning hard against me, pressing sweatshirt to sweatshirt tightly. 

“Thanks for coming.” I tightened the hug, so he couldn’t misconstrue it as a polite dismissal. “For showing up. It was good to see you again.” 

“Any time?” he said uncertainly. 

“Whenever you don’t want to be that Knight guy,” I told him in an undertone. “Whenever you need a different headspace. We all need those. Or, I don’t know. You’re an okay friend. If you want to just come over. Hang out.”

“Come hang?” Harry asked, a smirk creeping into his voice. “To chillax? To crash in your crib? Your pad?”

“Jesus Christ, you’re an asshole, Dresden.”

“And you’re kind of a dick, Hendricks. Anyone ever tell you that?” But he was smiling, and so was I, his arms tight around me, his cheek against my hair. Christ he was tall. “I-- do you mean it? I might have to.” 

“Yeah.” I was getting that sense. 

“It’s... normal here. Your home. The little stuff you do with Gard. Maybe the open relationship thing is weird but. Not. Comparatively?” he said, obviously coming up with the words bit by bit as his brain spat them out for him. 

“Normal,” I said, amused, because… Valkyrie and hair potions and fighting elves and demons for the mob. 

“Coffee. Showers. World of Minecraft,” he said, completely earnestly-- I didn’t correct him. “I can be human here,” he finished quietly. 

“Just bring more hair potion. I have to be Jim for this one. He’s naive enough to like you.”

He looked down, surprised, which went to ‘shocked’ when I winked at him. 

“Oh.” 

He needed to be normal. I enjoyed being transformative. Gard just liked to play. It could be... a very good arrangement. 

Down the line we’d have to have some hard talks. Like: ‘my boss thinks your destinies are entwined and beating him about the head and shoulders with Hobbes’ _Leviathan_ hasn’t helped and ‘libertarianism’ confuses him when we do the free will talk.’ Also: ‘my boss wants desperately to get in your pants but thinks that it’s his ~responsibility to Chicago~, tildes or jazz-hands included, not to act on his bisexuality’. Also: ‘you work for a neutral-to-hostile foreign state poised for war’, and ‘Gard’s employer is interested in you in ways that worry me.’ 

The thing about the hard talks is that they’re a lot easier to have when the other person is there, though. 

Dresden had been a neutral-to-hostile entity for me for a too-long time: irresponsible considering how long he’d been knee-deep in Chicago’s invisible politics. More than that-- I’d let myself see him as a threat, less as a person, who needed compassion and safe haven somewhere he didn’t have to be afraid he was visiting death and destruction on the innocents. Sigrun and I are a lot of things-- innocent isn’t one of them. Protective, though, and safe haven, I could do.

I wasn’t trusting him with my Xbox or anything, but I could stock up on board games. 

“Any time,” I repeated for him, and he melted into my arms and kissed me.


End file.
